Axiomathes (2012) 22:315–354

DOI 10.1007/s10516-012-9183-2

ORIGINAL PAPER

How Is Critical Ontology Possible? Toward

the Foundation of the General Theory
of the Categories, Part One (1923)

Nicolai Hartmann • Keith R. Peterson

Received: 1 October 2011 / Accepted: 14 February 2012 / Published online: 13 April 2012
Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract This is a translation of an early essay by the German philosopher Nicolai

Hartmann (1882–1950). In this 1923 essay Hartmann presents many of the funda-
mental ideas of his new critical ontology. He summarizes some of the main points of
his critique of neo-Kantian epistemology, and provides the point of departure for his
new approach in an extensive criticism of the errors of the classical ontological
tradition. Some of these errors concern the definition of an ontological category or
principle, and others concern the relations among categories themselves. The outline
for the new ontology is sketched through the correctives Hartmann appends to the
treatment of each error, prefiguring his mature ontological system.

Keywords Categories
Cognitive categories
Critical ontology
Errors
Ideal

being
Kant
Ontology
Ontological categories
Real being
Spheres of being

1 Introduction

Ontology has become such a suspicious and even impertinent enterprise for
contemporary philosophy, largely due to the Kantian critique and its impact, that the

Hartmann 1958, 268–313. Original in Festschrift für Paul Natorp (1924), Ernst Cassirer, ed., De
Gruyter, Berlin. Translator’s notes are marked with [TR], and the remainder are Hartmann’s own
footnotes. Kleinere Schriften page numbers appear in brackets in the text, and all bracketed insertions
into the text are the translator’s. A bibliography of works referred to by Hartmann has also been included
here. The translator thanks Walter De Gruyter for permission to publish the essay.

Translator: Keith R. Peterson.

N. Hartmann
K. R. Peterson (&)

Department of Philosophy, Colby College, 4550 Mayflower Hill, Waterville,
ME 04901-8840, USA
e-mail: Keith.Peterson@colby.edu
URL: http://www.colby.edu/directory_cs/krpeters/

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mere name ‘ontology’ elicits unease—the kind of unease involuntarily evoked by the
reemergence of atavisms long overcome. A value judgment is concealed in this
reactive emotional response. The question is whether that value judgment is justified.
Ontology from Aristotle to Christian Wolff was intended to be the ‘science of
being as such.’ Against this project skepticism has always raised the question ‘‘how
can we know anything about ‘being as such’?’’ The Critique poses the same
question possibly even more radically. ‘Being as such’ is altogether objectionable to
it, since the Critique is idealistic. Not only can it not tolerate knowledge of anything
existing in itself [Ansichseiend], it cannot tolerate being-in-itself [das Ansichseiend
selbst]. In fact, taking the Critique as its point of departure, post-Kantian idealism
abruptly drew the conclusion that there is no being-in-itself, and today neo-
Kantianism has vigorously taken up the notion as well.
Nevertheless, in the face of such criticism, the question must be raised: is there any
other fundamental theoretical question than that concerning ‘being as such’? Don’t
the idealistic theories in principle pose and answer the same question when they
attempt to demonstrate the ‘ideality of being’? It cannot be doubted that they are
dealing just as much with the essence of being, they only explain it differently. The
difference pertains solely to the response to the question of being, not to the question
itself. Even the most extreme subjectivism thinks it necessary at least to explain the
‘appearance’ [Schein] of being, so far as it is capable. The same holds for skepticism,
although in reverse. Even skepticism deals with being as such, in that it manages only
with difficulty to achieve the epoche´ with respect to being. This is because the epoche´
is valid, in the first place, precisely in regard to being. In short, theorizing that is not at
bottom ontological has never existed, and is impossible. It belongs to the essence of
thinking to be able to orient itself—not to nothing—but only toward what is
[Seiendes]. That was the meaning of the ancient Eleatic thesis.
In the effort to avoid this conclusion nothing is accomplished by restricting this
fundamental theoretical question solely to the problem of knowledge. It is utter self-
deception when one tries to escape the question [269] of being in this way. Precisely
the opposite is achieved. There is no question of knowledge without the question of
being. This is because there is no knowledge whose whole meaning would not consist
in knowledge of ‘what is.’ Knowledge is precisely the being-in-relation of a
consciousness to something-that-is. The theory may very well show that the
independently existing thing really does not exist independently. But the phenomenon
of the relation is not disposed of on that account. It endures, outlasts any theory which
denies it, and in the end stubbornly returns, unremedied and indeed irremediable.
Such theories can only hold their ground if they take up the problem of being-in-itself
[Problem des Ansichseins] from the beginning. At the very least, one still has to
acknowledge as a problem that which one would like to prove to be utterly void. The
problem is always an ontological problem. An epistemology which disputes this is
hardly an epistemology. What it speaks of is then not ‘knowledge’ at all.
The misunderstanding, however, is rooted more deeply. Apriorism has fostered
it. This ‘fostering’ consists in a misunderstanding of the a priori itself. It has been
repeated ad nauseam since Kant that a priori knowledge is possible only where the
object of knowledge is a mere appearance; one could at least not know anything
a priori about something existing in itself. In this case the object would be

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represented even before its being given and independently of its being given. Its
essence would have to be one with that of the representation, putting to rest its claim
to be an entity existing independently of the representation.
Anyone who reasons this way does not even see the problem of knowledge. To
be sure, he makes it astoundingly easy for himself, but he misses the point from the
start. Representation is, as such, never knowledge; it can be, but then it is not
knowledge by virtue of its own essence, but by virtue of the essence of a
heterogeneous and transcendent relation to something else, by the relation to an
object intended by it beyond the representation. Whether it be thought, imaginary
objects, or ostensible knowledge of being, representation emptily running on
without such a counterweight is a priori in the widest sense. It is not a priori
knowledge, however. It is a mistake to believe that the problem of the a priori is a
purely epistemological one. Wishes, intentions, suppositions, and prejudices also
have an a priori character. An a priori object [Gebilde] first acquires its epistemic
value through a particular dignity, not belonging to it merely due to its apriority,
which Kant called ‘objective reality’ or ‘objective validity.’ The Critique of Pure
Reason teaches in the most emphatic way just how much the proof of objective
validity is in itself a problem by giving a central place to the ‘transcendental
deduction’ in the problem of knowledge. This deduction comprises precisely that
which gives epistemic value to the a priori factor of object-representation. Its task is
to demonstrate the ‘objective reality’ of that which the a priori synthesis [270] under
‘pure concepts of the understanding’ asserts about objects. Whether it succeeds in
doing so is another question. However, there is no doubt that the deduction pertains
directly to the ontological problem disguised in the apriorism of the cognitive
categories.
Kant had a clear awareness of this whole problem. He had not lost contact with
the fundamental ontological problem of knowledge. It initially and increasingly
becomes lost in post-Kantian Idealism. This process is completed in neo-
Kantianism. One now believes that one is entitled to understand the whole problem
of knowledge as a merely logical problem. This undoubtedly gives wings to
apriorism as such, but it ceases to be epistemological apriorism. It is only the weight
of the ontological element in the problem of knowledge which can bring apriorism
down to earth and safeguard it from speculative flights of conceptual fancy.
It is precisely the problem of knowledge, and in it, furthermore, precisely the
problem of a priori knowledge, which most urgently needs an ontological
foundation. Without it everything here is hovering in mid-air. Without it one
cannot distinguish representation from knowledge, thought from insight, fancy from
truth, or speculation from science. In any case, in order to avoid the ontological
problem it does no good to seek shelter in the problem of knowledge.

2 The General Ontological Problematic

What Was the Old Ontology Really Lacking? If Kant is credited with the
destruction of ontology’s historical existence, then it might be believed that it was
missing nothing other than the ‘critique,’ nothing other than the knowledge of the

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boundaries of its competence. The old cosmology, psychology, and theology were
ontologically founded. If that were the case, however, then their annihilation by the
critique would not have been needed. The foundations would have remained in
existence, and only a restriction of their scope would have been introduced. Yet the
original meaning of prima philosophia, such as Aristotle conceived it, was a
completely different, far more serious and rigorous one, in light of which all those
later ‘dogmatic’ appendices—to which alone Kant objected in the Critique of Pure
Reason—look like arbitrary accessories, not to mention excesses, of popular
philosophy.
Aristotle gave ‘the science of being as such’ a twofold foundation. The first lay in
the doctrine of matter and form (Book F of the Metaphysics), the other in the doctrine
of potentiality and actuality (Book H). The union of both lay in the proposition that
form is pure actuality. The thesis that form and efficient cause are identical was also
implicit in it, [271] as well as that the latter coincides with the final cause. Only the last
of all of these theses is addressed by the Kantian critique, and it is first found in the
Critique of Teleological Judgment. Ontology, however, in no way stands or falls with
the teleological character of one’s image of the world. Ontology can easily be
detached from teleology, as the example of Spinoza only proves. The ontological
content of the theory of matter has also widely varied in the course of the centuries.
Matter appears at one time congealed to become a genuine fundament, thinned out
into nothingness at another. In accord with these vacillations the metaphysics of being
appears in a more dualistic or more monistic form. Only the theory of forms
consistently runs through the whole series of ontological systems—at least in their
fundamentals. The genuine essence of ancient ontology clings to it.
What constitutes the essence of the theory of forms? Is it the thesis of medieval
realism that the pure formae substantiales are the genuine bearers of absolute being,
and everything else imitations made in their image? Or is it that these forms can be
conceived as the ideas of a world-reason, as thoughts of a divine understanding?
Both of these are impossible, and a variety of similar conceptions incessantly vary
in accord with the prejudices of the age, while the ontological attitude [Einstellung]
remains the same.
What constituted the essence of form from Aristotle to Wolff was its logical
structure. The basic conviction was that there is a single, identical realm of forms,
the logical domain of pure concepts, and that this was at the same time the realm of
the forms of being. That gave logic an enormous predominance in metaphysics, and
if the problem of matter had not remained indigestible in the background like a bad
conscience, it would have meant the complete hegemony of logic. Since the forms
of being are indeed not given as such, and everything nevertheless centers on
knowledge of them, only one path remained open: to take them from the logical
sphere. The tantalizing view that has encumbered ontology with odium now
presents itself. This is because the realm of logic is taken to be that of thought itself.
Accordingly, thinking does not need to follow the troublesome path of experience,
but wherever it reaches it immediately grasps the essence of things that are.
Aristotelian ‘apodictic’ was already ontological in this sense, even when the
counterweight of a preparatory inductive method was not lacking. This method-
ological counterweight was increasingly lost over time, and deductivism became

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absolute. The idea of a philosophia prima became ever more transparent, more
rational, and culminated in the ideal of a pure science of reason.
The problem we are dealing with in these different ways is at bottom an
epistemological problem. The history of apriorism is indissolubly bound up with it.
If the real lies in the eternal forms, then [272] the central question of ontology is the
question of the conceptual grasp of the forms. If concept and form of being are
identical, then this grasp is guaranteed—through logic; and moreover, guaranteed as
a pure, a priori conceptual grasp, for logic is a pure a priori science. The identity
thesis that lies at the basis of this dogma goes back to the Platonic theory of the
Ideas. It was Plato who was the first to hold that the ‘unconcealment of what is
[Unverborgenheit des Seienden]’ is to be grasped immediately ‘in the logoi.’ The
‘Idea’ was to him the metaphysical expression of the structural identity between the
principle of thinking and the principle of being. Of course, by this means the
problem was not resolved for him. In order to seize the Idea, a particular method
was still required, that of the ‘hypothesis,’ in which a critical reference back to the
phenomena was clearly included. This critical aspect of method, however, was lost
over the course of time, just as much as was Aristotle’s method of induction. What
remained was the dogma of the identity of the form of being and the logos.
The Platonic and Aristotelian elements of ontology, the apriorism of the pure
knowledge of being and the autonomy of the logical, are closely intertwined
throughout the history of metaphysics. Logic is the very archetype of a pure a priori
science. Once placed under the identity thesis described above, it is in the perfect
position to afford a privilege to the prejudice of a universal apriorism of being. Now,
if in this apriorism the Platonic moment of intuition is lost, and instead of relating
apriorism to intuition one relates it to thinking and understanding, then it turns out to
be a universal rationalism. The general schema of such a rationalism is a purely
deductive one. The first principles (few in number) are ‘certain’ and everything in
the realm of ontological knowledge should follow from them apodictically. A
method that proceeds analytically, from the ground up, cannot arise in the vicinity
of this unified deductive scheme. Where it does in fact emerge (as with Descartes),
its motive is already critical toward ontology. In conjunction with this Cartesian
intuitivism of the highest principles, however, the comprehensive deductive
orientation still remains in force. Even Leibniz could still believe in the overbearing
force of the logical. Indeed, the same basic attitude still lives on in the Critique of
Pure Reason, in Hegel, and in logicistic neo-Kantianism.
What really is the mistaken aspect of this ontology? The historical facts just
mentioned prove that its genuinely ontological aspect is not at fault. Nor does the
error lie in the notorious blurring of the distinction between essence and existence,
as is familiar from the ‘ontological proof of God’s existence.’ This was not at all
generalized by Scholasticism. Rather, the blurring was possible only on the basis of
a more general prejudice. This is to be sought in the total metaphysical orientation,
in the principle of the method itself. The mistake is precisely the presupposed
identity of logical [273] form and ontological form. According to this presuppo-
sition there cannot be anything alogical in reality; logic rules throughout the world
of things, right down to particularization, concretion, and individuation. As
corollary of the first identity thesis is a second presupposition, the identification of

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logical structure and pure thought, reason (ratio). This too is a closely allied, but
entirely arbitrary, assumption. In it the fact that there is a domain of ideal structures
and lawfulness, existing independently of thought and already presupposed as
existing by thinking itself, goes unrecognized. Such laws as the principle of identity
or of contradiction, the dictum de omni et nullo and the laws of the syllogistic
figures are of this type. Thinking, of course, is not indifferent to them, it orients
itself by their means as by its laws; but for this reason the essence of these laws is
not originally that of the laws of thought. The essence is rather, for its part,
indifferent to thinking. These laws belong to the same sphere as mathematical laws,
and it can easily be seen from this fact that the latter stand under the former as
highest principles. It would be sheer nonsense to claim that the mathematical laws
are laws of thought. The lawfulness of thought is precisely not of a mathematical
sort, but in the broadest sense the lawfulness of the real. A determination of the real
according to mathematical laws would be made incomprehensible from the outset if
their essence were that of the laws of thought—this would be to turn the central
issue on its head and to wish to incorporate the real itself into thinking. This,
however, is not at all the thesis of the traditional ontology.
Thus, there are actually three completely different [types of] structures that are
taken to be identical in the old ontology: those of thinking, those of ideal being, and
those of real being. Of course, there are many reasons for the identification of these
structures. The structures of ideal being apparently play a mediating role in the
apriorism of cognition. No one will deny that they must in fact at least partially
coincide with those of the real, and partially with those of thinking as well. A priori
cognition of the real would not be possible unless this were the case. This need not
imply, however, a thoroughgoing identity of these structures. In fact, it must
ostensibly not imply such an identity, for otherwise an unintelligible element in the
realm of the real would be rendered impossible.1 Moreover, no one who really
understands the problem would want to suggest that everything real is even
knowable, let alone knowable a priori.
Therefore, it is necessary initially to sharply distinguish between the three
spheres. In doing so, nothing is decided beforehand regarding their structural
coincidence and its bounds. The error of the old ontology did not lie in the fact that
it assumed the coincidence of the three spheres, but in that it did not set any
boundaries to this coincidence. In this manner the relationship between the spheres
was suspended in principle, and the independence of the spheres in relation to one
another was cancelled. Identity theses are [274] always the most convenient
solutions to metaphysical problems, since they are the most radical simplifications.
The old ontology was built on just such a radical simplification of the central
problem. What is precisely in question is whether all real structures are logical ones,
and likewise whether all logical structures are realized. It is equally open to question

1
‘‘Unintelligible’’ and its forms throughout render irrational and its variations, an important term for
Hartmann. I think that his own parenthetical gloss soon to follow on 274—‘‘gnoseologically irrational
(transintelligible)’’—amply justifies this usage. While I occasionally use ‘‘irrational’’ in English (as in the
passage just cited), the word is charged with a host of unwanted connotations that are utterly out of place
in Hartmann. ‘‘Nonrational’’ or ‘‘noncognizable’’ might be alternatives as well, but I have found
‘‘unintelligible’’ to be the most precise and natural term [TR].

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whether all logical lawfulness recurs in thinking, or even whether it is accessible to

thinking at all; likewise, conversely, it should be asked whether the lawful structures
of thinking are exclusively logical, or whether even more guiding forces intervene
here—for there is also a psychology of thinking that is far from logical structure.
There could be gnoseologically irrational (transintelligible) elements in the logical-
ideal realm just as much as there may be alogical structures in the actual thinking of
real individuals. There are limits to the structural identity between the logical sphere
and the sphere of thinking just as there are limits to the identity of the real and the
logical spheres.
Taking both of these very significant limitations to the identity of the spheres
together, from this perspective the intermediate position of the logical sphere
between the real sphere and the sphere of thinking may be seen, such that a
limitation on their structural identity clearly results from the mediated relation of the
last pair. The fundamental question of ontology depends upon this relation in a
decisive way: what can we know about real being as such? The old ontology
established itself on the soil of an absolute apriorism at just this point; in its
structures thinking immediately reveals the structure of the real. This standpoint is
the root of all evil, it is radically false. The greatest and most difficult of all
metaphysical questions is precisely this: whether and how far thinking, with its own
lawfulness, can even strike upon the essence of being. In its day, ancient skepticism
clearly articulated this question and divided it into plausible aporetic ‘topoi.’ One of
the most remarkable falsifications of this problem is that aporetics was always
understood only as an epistemological affair and not at the same time as an
ontological aporetics, a falsification for which the dogmatism of both ancient and
modern times is to blame. The real epistemological problem in apriorism can only
be newly appreciated when the ontological problem contained in it has been
recognized. The Critique of Pure Reason has provided the valuable service of
retrieving this fundamental problem. In it, for the first time, the question about the
objective validity of a priori judgments is deliberately posed and separated from the
fact of apriority as such. It is not Kant’s answer to this question that is significant—
for it is conditioned by his own [idealist] standpoint—but the fact that he posed the
question at all. The significance of the ‘transcendental deduction’ does not lie in the
fact that it awards the twelve concepts of the understanding validity for empirically
real objects, nor in that it denies them validity for the thing in itself, but solely in
that it [275] demonstrated, in action, the necessity of specially providing proof of all
such validity or invalidity. Although Kant did not intend the deduction to be
ontological, it at least teaches how the ontological question is to be critically posed.
So, we must distinguish between the ontology of ideal being and the ontology of
real being. The extent to which both can be unified again cannot be decided
beforehand and remains to be investigated. Both [spheres] are initially to be
separated completely from the lawfulness of thought—despite the dependence of
the latter upon ideal structures. We are not dealing here with a distinction between
‘formal’ and ‘material’ ontology, as has been recently developed by the
phenomenological approach, for the real sphere does not lack forms, nor does the
ideal sphere lack matter. Besides, such a distinction would affect a false
stratification from the start—as if everything real stood completely under ideal

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forms. By this means the old prejudice would be strengthened again. All of this must
remain open to question. The forms of the real could very well be different too, if
not in every respect, at least in part. The ideal sphere is, in any case, not at all suited
to being the sphere of the forms of the real. It is what it is, purely in itself, and
whatever purpose its structures may serve for the real is extrinsic to it.
If we succeed in achieving a precise determination of these spheres, as well as of
their relations to one another, then far more is accomplished than could have been
supposed given the unimposing nature of the problem. The metaphysically
fundamental determinations of knowledge, of ethos, of consciousness, and of
aesthetic objects can be considered only based on such a redefinition. The degree to
which this applies to a priori cognition of the real has already been indicated above.
It applies to ethics to the extent that the ethical values are in themselves ideal
entities, but the behavior of human beings subject to their norms is real. The
relevance of the distinction for the aesthetic object is even easier to see, since,
despite its ostensible unity, it falls of its own accord partly into the real and partly
into the ideal sphere. In both cases philosophical understanding of the central issue
hangs on the relation of the two spheres of being. The basic problem is everywhere
an ontological one. This broad compass of problems belongs in principle essentially
to ontology. It shows how a genuine philosophia prima, a universal fundamental
discipline, a theory of principles of a universal kind, is in fact involved in its
problems. Of course, none of the other more specialized disciplines could precede it,
in terms of the ratio cognoscendi. Its primacy is not a methodological one; it is a
primacy of the subject matter [Sache]. The method must first of all rise to the level
of this prius. Naturally, this can only be done from within the framework of the
special disciplines.
At the same time it is clear that the idea of such a philosophia prima is not
coextensive with that of ontology. This is because the whole series [276] of value-
principles implicated in [first philosophy’s] object of inquiry is evidently not merely
ontological any longer. It is not just a theory of ontological principles alone,
whether of ideal being or of real being, but a universal theory of principles. The
reason for its priority is to be sought precisely here. The difference between
ontological and axiological principles (as well as the positive relation between
them) can only be determined on its soil, and is only visible from its point of view.
If one would nevertheless like to retain the name ‘category theory’ for it—which is
in itself not a limitation—then by the term ‘category’ one must understand not only
principles of being and of knowing, but also principles of each and every kind. For
category theory itself, understood as philosophia prima, the task arises of
determining not only the categories of the ideal and the real in their relations, not
only of working out the relationship of both spheres to the categories of cognition,
but also, in addition to all of this, of investigating the whole complex of all of these
theoretical categories properly and decisively in its relation to the axiological
categories. Whether its tasks are exhausted by all of this cannot be decided in
advance. It is evident that every additional domain of differently structured
principles, provided there are any, is to be integrated in the same way. That is, the
task of philosophia prima is an unfinished circle, a pros hemas [for us] open totality
of overlapping, partial tasks.

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It might already be easily overlooked that in fact tasks of greatest consequence

fall to the theory of categories as defined here. Even the question about the relation
between ontological and axiological principles can teach us something. It is not only
the fundamental questions of ethics that are implicated here, the question about the
essence of moral values or of freedom. The ultimate metaphysical questions
regarding Weltanschauung depend on this very issue. All teleological thinking is
axiologically conditioned, for the being-an-end of some content is rooted
necessarily in its value character. A teleological image of the world therefore
readily provides categorial primacy to values rather than to ontological principles,
and allows the latter to be conditioned by the former. A metaphysics set up in such a
way need not bother to investigate, or even to ask, whether such a relation of
conditioning is even possible given the essence of these two types of principles—
and up to now virtually all metaphysics worthy of the name has been of teleological
design. The same thing holds for the problem of determinism, the pantheism
problem, every kind of developmental theory, and every kind of antinomics, e.g.,
the opposition between substantialism and relationalism, or between individualism
and universalism. Everywhere it is the relationships between the principles which
shed light on the issues. Only on the basis of a genuinely universal theory of
categories is it possible—if not to solve them—at least to take hold of these
problems radically, in all scientific rigor. [277]
We saw that the usual misgivings about ontology are easily rectified as soon as
the blade of the Critique is turned against them, though even greater difficulties
arise for ontology from another perspective. The problem of ontology has led to a
more general problem, the problem of principles, or of the categories. Here the
problem of the spheres of being returns, this time on a larger scale. It is already
contained in the basic principles of all philosophical areas of specialization, and
indeed always appears to be a new problem, for each time it is essentially displaced
in tandem with the shifting relations between the spheres themselves. However,
only investigation into the categories on a case by case basis can provide
information about this relation. Categories are the structural elements in phenomena
of all kinds and—within the limits of their rational character—the only philosoph-
ically comprehensible elements. But how well has the problem of the categories
itself been grasped philosophically?
Providing a developed theory of the categories means nothing less than dealing
with and taking up all together the great aporias of metaphysical Weltanschauung.
Only categorial analysis—the explication of and precise investigation into the
structure of individual categories and their systematic interrelations in the whole—
can lend clarification to and adjudication of those aporias, at least to the extent that
they are at all accessible to thought. The theory of categories proves to be genuine
philosophia prima in this sense too. How far, however, can this path be trodden?
That still remains to be seen, because only categorial analysis itself can initiate that
kind of investigation and the research does not yet exist. A discussion of method
prior to the methodical labor on the issue itself is just as impossible for categorial
analysis as it is for phenomenology, aporetics, analysis, or dialectic. What progress
has been made up to now regarding the problem of creating a theory of categories?
Surprisingly little, when we consider the venerable age of the problem—the ancient

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Pythagoreans already had a table of the categories. Over the course of many
centuries there have been few minds who have seriously labored on the problem of
the categories, to be sure some of the best minds whose own problems demanded a
concern for it (but by no means all of them). They can be counted in a single breath:
in the ancient world Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Proclus; in the Modern period
Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel; between these two groups a few idiosyncratic
Scholastics; and most recently Eduard von Hartmann and Hermann Cohen.2 By far
the greatest and most developed attempt at a theory of categories lies in Hegel’s
Logic. The wealth of content in this tremendous work has hardly even been
historically discovered, let alone put to good use. At the same time, however, this
system is the [278] most conditioned by a particular [idealist] standpoint, and its
proper evaluation requires an absolutely objective view, which we cannot in any
way have today with respect to Hegel. The metaphysical weight of panlogism
burdens the Hegelian logic in advance with prejudices—and indeed some of the
same ones which may be blamed on the old ontology—such that to achieve a stance
purely ‘this side’ of them would in itself make up a life’s work. The same holds to a
lesser degree for the other classical attempts, especially the more recent ones (most
certainly for the most recent), but arguably holds least regarding the attempts by the
ancients. What is important is to glean from each of them that which is actually
envisioned, incontestable, and transhistorical in his interpretation of the problem of
the categories, and to strike out all of that which is prejudice, standpoint, or system-
construction. Plato, Plotinus, Descartes, and Leibniz are exemplars in this respect.
The outer boundaries to which they have followed the interconnected ensemble of
categories, however, are too narrowly drawn. In Aristotle we already find a richer
yield of content, although he was far more constrained by metaphysical prejudices,
especially when we conjoin the basic governing principles of his metaphysics with
his so-called ‘ten categories.’ Hegel is the first who outlined a system of categories
on a grand scale and elaborated laws concerning their relations to one another. The
law of the system, however, is taken from the ‘Idea of a system’ [Systemidee], rather
than from the essence of the categories themselves. The unifying, deductive
dialectic does violence to the phenomena. Cohen’s logic stands in contrast to it, with
its emphasis on the positive sciences. In it individual categories are taken from the
facts of cognition; the interconnection emerges naturally, and it is an interconnec-
tion of contents. However, the diversity of contents is shrunken, its standpoint
subjectivistically limited, and the relevant domain of investigation is cut down in
light of his scientism.
It is evident that the whole task of the theory of categories is above all to take on
the radical rectification of all of these transgressions, boundary displacements, and
speculative presumptions. In this manner, what is really needed for positively
tackling the task of categorial analysis will naturally become apparent. The principle
omnis determinatio est negatio (and its converse) also holds for method. When we
2
Works such as those by Emil Lask (as well as countless others) which pose the problem of the
categories generally but do not elaborate any categories themselves cannot be counted among these,
precisely because they do not lead to a discussion of the categories themselves. The same holds for many
works of earlier eras. In particular, we are indeed indebted to many thinkers for important information
regarding one or another category, but who otherwise keep a distance from the problem.

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take into account the abundance of broad problematic questions specified above, all
of which come together in research on principles, as well as the need for discussing
a priori the possible distinctions in the problem of categorial analysis itself—at least
as possibilities—discussion of three major issues emerges as the minimum required
preparation for categorial analysis. The first pertains to the aforementioned
detection of the sources of error in all previous theories of categories, where the
investigation must proceed purely systematically and call upon historical evidence
only for testimony [279] and illustrations. It concerns errors that are not only
important to us because they are historical, but also because they are our own. A
second aspect of categorial analysis is concerned with the characteristics of the very
problem spheres for which the categories are valid. It is assumed that the categories
need not originally belong to any of these spheres, and that for each individual
category it remains an open question to what extent and with which structural
changes it is valid for one or another sphere. Thirdly, an attempt has to be made to
work out the highest principles of the stratification of categories (which may be
considered categorial laws), and concurrently with them the methodological
guidelines for their investigation.
These three divisions are meant to be preliminaries to the theory of categories
itself, to show how it forms the fundamental desideratum of any philosophy that
wishes seriously to take up the full weight of the fundamental metaphysical
questions that are everywhere embedded in the background of philosophical
problems. This threefold aporetics forms the prolegomenon to any future
philosophia prima. It is ontologically oriented in its point of departure, in that the
nearest-lying, tangible rudiments are almost always to be sought across the board in
the problem of theory. By its nature, however, its perspective aims at a universal
theory of principles, one which takes equally into account all levels of problems.
The first of these three divisions will be provided here, the most fundamental
‘critical’ one.

3 The Traditional Errors

The errors that have been propagated and accumulated in the philosophical tradition
of category research are of many diverse types. Not all of them are worthy of special
investigation. Only those that have somehow become typical, have consolidated
themselves into fixed prejudices, and have become disastrous for philosophy will
concern us. It is perhaps not by chance that it is precisely these which have affixed
themselves to the names of the great masters—rightfully or not—such that we are
involuntarily tempted to name the errors after them. Nevertheless, the authority of
these names is partially responsible for the tenacity with which these errors have
been retained by the tradition.
It is not our business here to track down the intellectual motivations for these
mistakes. Some are of a very subjective sort, and some are consequences of more
general systematic prejudices. Many can easily be traced back to mythological
motives, others are rooted in the insufficiency of the concepts of positive science
that are unconsciously taken as models. However, these motives are almost entirely

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quite transparent and do not stand in any relation to the broad sweep of systematic
consequences which [280] flow from them. The result of this is that it is not at all
difficult to reveal these errors and correct them once we have first comprehended
their nature, and this comprehension almost amounts to overcoming them. Virtually
without exception, the errors as such bear no metaphysical weight of their own. This
weight attaches exclusively to the contents handled philosophically. It is an entirely
different question how to take action positively in light of the insight gained from
the investigation, and what is justifiably required to redeem the transgressions. Of
course, the resolution [of the transgressions] first turns on understanding the error.
Their resolution is nevertheless a cura posterior [a later concern].
Occupation with these historical motives may be exciting, but is systematically
trivial. For the time being what must be accomplished consists solely in a
phenomenology of the prejudices themselves, insofar as the interpretation of the
nature and system of the categories is influenced by them. At least this much is clear
in advance—this influence exists in the greatest degree. Indeed, we do not possess
even a single attempt at a theory of categories that is critically constructed in this
regard. The reigning power of the traditional prejudices is still unimpaired through
them all, even if to quite different degrees in different theories.
The following account begins with the historically older and more naı̈ve
prejudices and ascends to the more differentiated and theoretically conditioned
ones.

3.1 The Error of Homogeneity

Plato, the first thinker who created a universal realm of principles, characterized the
relation between principle and concretum as ‘participation.’ Things ‘participate in
the Ideas,’ by which he meant that they are constituted such as they are because the
Idea is an archetype existing in itself [ansichseienden Urbildes], primarily and
absolutely, according to which things are first formed. The difference between Idea
and thing lies in the fact that Ideas are perfectly that which the things are
imperfectly, and their similarity consists in the fact that it is one and the same
essence which is perfect in the Idea and imperfect in the thing. Therefore, Idea and
thing are similar in principle. The Idea of Beauty is even more beautiful than the
thing, is ‘Beauty itself,’ the Idea of Man is all the more Man, ‘Man itself.’ The
ancients designated this particular type of correspondence ‘homonymy.’
This characteristic in Platonism is for us today hardly comprehensible any longer,
at least in such a crude form. In the Platonic works themselves it is downright
confusing when we read, for instance, that the Idea of size is itself larger than the
Idea of smallness, or that the Idea of rulership itself rules like a human ‘ruler’ over
the Idea of slavery, while the latter serves the former as a human [281] slave serves
a human master. A whole series of aporias of methexis in the Parmenides rests on
the amphiboly of this homonymy.
The metaphysical difficulty grows even worse when we consider that in this way
a duality of two worlds without any real qualitative difference is posited, almost an
empty tautology, a doubling of the world without genuine enrichment of the world’s
content or its comprehensibility. It would be hard to believe that the meaning of the

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theory of ideas consists in this. The conceptions of methexis in the most well-known
writings nevertheless foster this impression. The qualitative homogeneity of Idea
and thing is, based on Plato’s own formulations, simply not to be interpreted away,
not even from the formulations of the later dialogues. In them the concept of
‘symploke’ turned methexis itself from the one-dimensional vertical axis into the
horizontal axis where the participation of the Ideas among themselves takes the
place of the notion of the participation of things in the Ideas. The concept of a
‘principle’ (arche) is clearly conceived in its purity and universal meaning, for the
Idea’s being-a-condition for things is and remains the crux of the matter throughout
all of the texts. However, the fact that a condition need not at all resemble the
conditioned is not grasped, and furthermore, it is not understood that it must
necessarily not resemble the conditioned if it is to explain anything at all. The error
of homogeneity is based on this. It has passed from the theory of the Ideas through
an innumerable series of systems (otherwise as different as can be) deep into the
modern period. One may rightfully call it the ‘Platonic Error.’
The error is not as innocent as it appears to be in Plato himself, who had never
systematically undertaken to draw all of the consequences from it, and who
ultimately nullified [aufhebt] the duplication of the world. Principles ought to
explain the unknown element in the phenomena. But how can these principles
explain the things if the principles are only the recurrence of the now purified
content that was already in the things anyhow? What was to be explained is already
presupposed in them. Therefore, nothing at all is explained by means of such
principles. As metaphysical fundamentals they are pure idem per idem [a circular
definition] (recall the later theory of the qualitates occultae!). More precisely, they
are descriptive generalizations of that which recurs with a certain regularity (even
lawfulness) in the multiplicity of things. In many later conceptions, e.g., in
Scholastic conceptual realism, they are at once the hypostatization of these
generalizations. They are not, however, formulations of that very lawfulness on the
basis of which the recurrence of the same in the midst of multiplicity takes place.
The last noted point is just what is required to grasp the problem of the
categories. It was not until the beginning of the Modern period that we managed to
gain a clear philosophical consciousness of this requirement. The [282] new natural
science had the largest share of the transformation, which initially proceeded in its
narrower domain with the notion that research into principles has to be research into
laws, and that laws can show an essentially qualitatively different face than the
phenomena which rest on them and exist through them. It has also brought with it
the reformulation of Platonism in philosophy. This process, however, is not yet
completed.
Generally speaking, in order to be a principle of phenomena at all, categories
need not be posited as being the same in principle as the concretum which rests on
them. Just as their mode of being is different in kind from that of the phenomena
(and Plato saw this clearly), their structural constitution must also be different. Only
by setting aside the old postulate of homogeneity will the path be cleared for fruitful
research into the categories. Only categorial analysis, however, can in each case
make out what the positive substantive [inhaltliche] relation between principle and
concretum is.

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3.2 The Error of Chorismos

We also habitually associate Plato’s name with the idea of a second prejudice, and the
Aristotelian polemic against the theory of ideas made this historical error almost
ineradicable. By the term ‘chorismos’ we understand the detachment or separation of
the Ideas from things. Plato had spoken of the ‘being-in-itself’ (kath’auto) of the
ideas, of their eternity above and beyond all becoming, and represented their mode of
being mythologically as ‘in a heavenly place.’ On this basis the dogma of an
ontological transcendence of the ideas was created.3 Thus, the portentous question
about how things are nevertheless belatedly to ‘participate’ in the Ideas could surface.
This question is unanswerable as soon as one has accepted the chorismos. Plato
developed the aporetics of the chorismos in an exemplary manner in the
Parmenides. An Idea that stands beyond the world of things requires for its
connection to the things a binding principle, thus, a second Idea, but the latter
requires for its connection with the former a third, and so forth in infinitum. Since
Aristotle this argument has been called the tritos anthropos [the third man]. But
Ideas which are detached from the things cannot be the principles of things. A God
who was in possession of such ideas could as little know or master things by means
of them as a man who, spellbound by the sphere of things, could know or master the
ideas. This barren intuition has been unjustly ascribed to Plato, but no one has
fought against it as harshly as he has. Because this intuition proliferated in his
lifetime, and, as it appears, also in his School thereafter, it has historically remained
attached to his name. [283]
This pseudo-Platonic prejudice has been a remarkably long-lived one, despite its
early recognized weakness. We can find its traces even in the Critique of Pure
Reason, where the categories first require a particular [type of] deduction in order to
demonstrate their ‘applicability’ to objects of experience. Here too the categories
are originally posited with a certain chorismos, and the role of the ‘heavenly place’
is played by the ‘transcendental subject.’ That the sphere of objects is encompassed
by the latter is not self-evident, to say the least, nor comprehensible in terms of the
essence of the categories themselves. Categories that are to be thought of as the
principles of things would ostensibly not require a deduction after the fact.4
What is required for the problem of the categories is a mode of being for its
principles that makes them by their nature immanent to the whole range of their
legitimate domain [Geltungsgebiet]. Or conversely, the world of things for which
the principles are valid must for its part somehow be immanent to the sphere of the
principles, for instance, proceed from them or be supported by them. Every other
conception of the principles is a distortion of the idea of a category. The late Plato
had the last of these two possibilities in mind when he took seriously the idea that all

3
We should understand a genuine ‘ontological’ transcendence by this, not the already obvious
gnoseological transcendence. This dogma describes the transcendence of the ideas to the world, not to the
subject.
4
We can also reverse the historical perspective and, looking backwards, see the great dialectical
investigations of Plato’s Parmenides as a kind of ‘transcendental deduction’ of the Ideas, with no sign of
subjectivism of course. It is precisely the chorismos of the Ideas that is conclusively bridged by means of
these investigations: the symploke leads to ‘the counterpart of the Idea,’ the concretum (Chapter 22).

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concrete structure first comes to be in the ‘interweaving’ of the Ideas. In the same
way, according to the Leibnizian conception of scientia generalis the real-
ontological deduction of all things is rooted in a kind of layering and continual
folding of the simplices.

3.3 The Error of Heterogeneity

More universal than but related to the error of the chorismos is the error of
heterogeneity. It also pertains to a mistaken distancing of principle and concretum,
not in terms of transcendence, but in terms of dissimilarity of content, or of
structural non-applicability. It is the counterpart of the Platonic error [of
homogeneity], its inversion, as it were, the opposite and just as perverse extreme.
All one-sided theories commit this error in that they universalize the principles of
one particular group of phenomena and extend them beyond their natural domain of
validity. The Pythagoreans committed it with the proposition that number is the
principle of all things; and contemporary mathematicism does the same thing, only
in a slightly modified form (e.g., in Cohen’s Logic). Mathematical categories are
definitely ontological categories, but they are not the only ones; even natural
phenomena contain qualitative and [284] relational elements which do not allow of
being reduced to mere relations of magnitude. This is even more clearly the case for
the living world, in which the quantitative factor apparently plays a merely
subordinate role. A spurious heterogeneity between principle and concretum is
introduced here. It registers with us as the total inadequacy of the principles in light
of the actual problematic encountered.
The most well-known example of this error occurs in so-called Materialism, and
is taken to a grotesque extreme. Physico-naturalistic categories are alleged to be
sufficient to explain spiritual life, the phenomena of consciousness, of thinking,
willing, etc. The same holds for every kind of Biologism or evolutionism, where the
same phenomena are to be explained using the categories of the organic realm.
Throughout these accounts, the inadequacy of the categories lies in the fact that they
are too poor in content, and do not touch the structural level of the concrete forms.
This is not always the only reason for the inadequacy. In Psychologism, for
example, it is rather the converse, as far as in it things like the structures of
knowledge or of thought [whose basic structure is objective (objektiv-gegenständ-
lich)] should be explained based on mental [seelisch] elements. The situation is
again different with Logicism, which indiscriminately stamps all phenomena with
the forms of the logical-ideal sphere. In a broader sense systems such as Pantheism
belong here too, which imposes teleological principles on nature; Idealism of all
kinds, which ascribes subjective categories to objects; Personalism, which tries to
understand all regions of phenomena on analogy with personal beings, and
innumerable other standpoints. All philosophical approaches that are known by their
very names as ‘-isms’ commit the same error in principle, no matter how much they
may differ from one another in other ways. A kernel of truth lies in all of them, and
the principles with which they operate legitimately hold for a small region of reality,
but become illegitimate when applied to the whole. Hegel was correct when he
claimed that every philosophical system has its legitimate place in the whole of

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philosophy. It is on solid ground only within the limits drawn by the structure of its
own principles, however. Every system has its legitimate core domain. It is an
illegitimate crossing of borders [Grenzüberschreitung] when it is extended beyond
this core domain. The error of heterogeneity consists in this illicit application
beyond the boundary of a category’s proper domain.
The positive requirement for the theory of categories that results from all of the
above is this: each domain of phenomena must have its own particular set of
categories that belong only to it. To the extent that they do indeed extend
themselves into a domain of differently constituted, structurally ‘higher’ phenom-
ena, as it were, they can only play a subordinate role and never pertain to what is
distinctive about these phenomena themselves. It does not follow from this postulate
that certain principles could not also have comprehensive significance as such. To
find out how, to what extent, and for what they are valid is the task of a particular
[285] investigation, a categorial analysis oriented to the particularity of the
phenomenon itself, and the final word on the subject can never lie in anything other
than this.

3.4 The Error of Formality and Conceptuality

In the distinction between matter and form that lies at the basis of Aristotelian
metaphysics, form acquires the character of the active, shaping, determining
principle, while matter acquires that of the undergoing and passive element. Now
since ‘principle’ in the narrower sense is only the determining and never the
determined, the well-known prejudice arose that the essence of a principle is
basically formal. A theory of categories based on this proposition automatically has
the disadvantage that it has no use for matter at all, and excludes it from its system
as the ‘unprincipled’ in itself, so to speak. Categories of matter as such are a
contradiction in terms. This already has a two-fold result in Aristotle: the universal
(‘first’) matter is not that of individual things, for in the latter matter is specialized,
differentiated. But how can matter differentiate itself of its own accord? Must it not
then contain determinations, that is, principles sui generis? For Aristotle these
determinations were ‘accidental’ (symbebekota). In this manner the problem is only
pushed back another step.
The basis of the Aristotelian prejudice is both teleological and logical. The pure
form is made synonymous with the final cause (the ‘first entelechy’) on one hand,
and with the concept (eidos, nature, essence) on the other. It is the concept which
categorically excludes everything material or substrate-like. This is the root of the
attitude that has held ontology in the chains of logic for so long, as well as made
ontology and logic ambiguous. Principles are concepts of principles, the forma
substantiales is the essentia logica. This interpretation provided a remarkably lean
solution to the problem of the a priori, but apriorism itself was expanded beyond its
natural limits by this means.
The prejudice of the formality and the conceptuality of principles together
constitute the Aristotelian double error. Both have reigned virtually without limit in
Scholasticism and in Modern rationalism. More interesting is the fact that both,

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applied in a subjective sense, can also be found again in Kant. In Kant a system of
forms of cognition stands over against the matter of cognition, and the ‘synthesis’
which the former executes is in principle the same determination of the in-itself
indeterminate as in the Aristotelian system. The thesis is only moderated by the fact
that the ‘matter’ in this case already possesses its own particular forms (space and
time). Aside from this, [286] the emphasis here also lies, alongside the form-
character, on conceptuality. Categories are concepts, ‘pure concepts of the
understanding,’ and Kant does not know how to think of them in any other way.
In this he is a pure Aristotelian, no less so than the ontologists of the old school.
The greatest triumph of Aristotelianism is celebrated in Hegel’s Logic, where the
dialectic of concepts straightaway claims to be a dialectic of being, of the world, of
nature, of spirit, i.e., to be absolutely all inclusive. As exemplary as this great
attempt may in itself be as an ideal for philosophia prima, it is nevertheless also the
historical deductio ad absurdum5 of the old double identity thesis: Princi-
ple = Form = Concept. It is precisely its universal execution that demonstrates
impressively the falsehood in its conclusions. Hegel’s categories are far from being
mere forms, but the dialectical concept-machine does not even completely contain
the formal element in them.
A theory of categories that does not wish to go astray demands unconditional
clarity about both Aristotelian prejudices.
First, the proposal that categories are in principle different from conceptual
categories must be accepted. Concepts are generally only attempts at comprehen-
sion, something completely post hoc and secondary, and even when the conceptual
grasp is adequate, the concept is still not the thing grasped. Usually, however, it is
inadequate. The fact that there is a history of conceptual categories proves this, that
is, it shows that there is a process that in the most favorable circumstances is a
progressive process of adequation—while that which is to be grasped, the category
itself, remains inalterable beyond all history of concepts. Categories exist in
themselves, independently of all conceptual grasping and indifferent to it, and they
determine the concrete entities joined to them according to their own immutable
lawfulness. This is true in the same measure for ontological categories as well as
epistemological categories, whose function in a knowing consciousness has nothing
to do with the conception of this function itself. They are just as independent of
concepts as are laws of nature. Their being grasped in concepts first begins with
their discovery in epistemology, but their function apparently precedes this
discovery.
Secondly, we must manage to come to the far more difficult realization that there
is no reason at all to limit the essence of categories to form or related structures,
such as laws or relations. Categories that contain nothing substrate-like [Substra-
thaftes] (nothing which cannot be reduced to form, law, or relation) will never be in
a position to ground the entities [Gebilde] whose principles they are in their total
concreteness, since these entities do contain [287] a substrate. We can only escape
the tiresome dualism of form and matter once and for all if we incorporate the

5
This is most likely a reference to a type of proof identified in Hermann Lotze’s Logic of 1874, Book II,
pp. 239–240 of the English translation [TR].

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material factor into the principles. There is absolutely no other way. However, to
incorporate a material factor in them is nothing less than paradoxical. In fact, it may
be grounded with ease phenomenologically on the basis of the categorial analysis
itself. There is a whole series of categories—space, time, substance, and causality
are only the most representative, but not at all the only ones—in which factors of
substrate [Substratmomente] are clearly demonstrable. To prove this is of course the
task of another investigation and can take place only through an analysis of the
individual categories themselves.6 For our present purposes, the insight will suffice
that restriction to formal elements does not lie in the essence of the categories in any
case, and that it has been arbitrarily introduced into the theory of categories based
on purely speculative motives. It is immediately apparent that with the sacrifice of
this prejudice an abundance of artificial aporias falls away that has unjustly blocked
the path toward a theory of principles. The most incurable misunderstandings have
always found sustenance in the apparent opposition between matter and the formal
essence of principles.

3.5 The Error of Subjectivity

The interpretation of categories as entities rooted in the subject—which I would like

right away to call the Kantian error—stands in closest relation historically with the
Aristotelian double error, but is not at all simply its consequence. The Aristote-
lianism of all ages understood the ‘concept’ to be precisely something not subjective
(even insofar as it was valid as a principle of cognition). In contrast, the thesis here
is that the principles belong to the subject, but the concretum for which they are
valid is the object. The two opposing dimensions ‘subject-object’ and ‘principle-
concretum,’ by nature orthogonally aligned, are here, if not directly made
equivalent, then at least made unidirectional, and are artificially placed parallel to
one another. It is obvious that this characterization is justified only from an idealist
perspective: since the concretum is dependent on its principles, and the latter are to
be found in the subject, then it appears that here the object is determined by the
subject. What leads to such an assumption is the independence of a priori intuitions
from the ‘given’ object, their existence in the subject before experience. How could
this be possible if the principles of the object did not lie in the subject? [288]
That is in fact Kant’s genuine argument. The formula of his own ‘supreme
principle’ already proves that it is invalid, and admits of a completely different
interpretation of the phenomenon of the a priori that nevertheless completely
satisfies the same facts.7 This is also the reason for the necessity of the
‘transcendental deduction.’ That which divides principle and concretum here

6
More specifics can be found in Logos, Vol. V, 1914–1915, ‘Über die Erkennbarkeit des Apriorischen,’
pp. 319ff., and in this volume p. 211, as well as in Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, Berlin
1921, pp. 208ff.
7
The ‘‘supreme principle’’ [oberster Grundsatz] of synthetic judgments is that ‘‘the conditions of the
possibility of experience in general must at the same time be the conditions of the possibility of the objects
of experience, and therefore have objective validity in a synthetic judgment a priori’’ (Kant 2007, A158/
B197) [TR].

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belongs to the more general schema of the chorismos, as mentioned above.

Nevertheless, it is no simple chorismos, for the transcendental relation does not exist
between principle and concretum as such, it is in fact first brought in through the
relation between subject and object, to which the relation between principle and
concretum is wrongly thought to be equivalent. This transcendental relation is to be
bridged by means of the ‘deduction,’ and that is the meaning of the proof of the
‘applicability’ of pure concepts of the understanding to ‘objects of possible
experience.’ This aporia is gnoseologically valid, for the subject makes synthetic
judgments a priori under his own subjective categories; and of the latter it is in fact
questionable whether they also have validity for the object. Ontologically, however,
the aporia is false; i.e., we cannot relate it to the [Kantian] problem of the categories
at all. For the latter does not arise apart from the problem of a priori knowledge.
Shifted into the ontological register it is an artificial aporia, generated solely by the
idealist standpoint, and stands or falls with it. It is a theoretical prejudice that the
object itself (and not merely the cognition of the object) also has its principles in the
subject. In fact, the object quite evidently has principles of its own prior to all
cognition, and does not need to receive them first from somewhere else. The valid
gnoseological aporia in the problem of the deduction first becomes meaningful in
just this way. Only on this basis does it concern whether the epistemological
principles (according to which judgments regarding the object are made a priori)
also pertain to the ontological determinations of the object existing in itself, which
stands under other principles, the ontological categories.
Kant’s idealism is an idealism of principles, not of things (since these remain for
him ‘empirically real’), an idealism not of the empirical subject, but of the
‘transcendental’ subject, as the bearer of principles, and in this sense it is rightfully
to be called a ‘transcendental idealism.’ It is an attempt at a solution, not a statement
of the problem. Those who fail to keep apart the levels of problems in the Critique
of Pure Reason always forget this. Of course, on this point Kant is the heir of a
much older tradition, one which makes it almost impossible for him to understand
by the term ‘principle’ anything other than the subjective, the functions of a
consciousness. For this reason, not only must the twelve categories be ‘concepts of
the understanding,’ space and time too are valid for him for precisely the same
reason as ‘mere forms of intuition.’ It is as a result of this characterization that the
[289] ineradicable misunderstanding that opposes ‘principle and object’ to one
another and takes it as an original, fundamental opposition has remained entrenched
to this day. We do not notice that it conceals the totally inadmissible conflation of
two heterogeneous contrasting pairs, ‘subject-object’ and ‘principle-concretum.’ A
whole knot of fundamental mistakes is concealed in this terminological confusion.
But the tradition upon which this confusion is based leads us far back through the
intellectus infinitus of the Scholastics to Book K of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where
for the first time ‘nous’ is honored as the collective bearer of all ‘pure actuality,’ i.e.,
of all formative principles. For nous is pure thinking, and has the form of a universal
subject. It is the genuine historical point of origin of all later metaphysical
subjectivism, while it itself, interestingly, still remains far ‘this side’ of the
emergence of the whole subsequent subject-object problem.

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We need hardly mention that the Kantian error returns at maximum strength in
neo-Kantianism. We need not concern ourselves with all the other further
outgrowths of subjectivism in recent times, above all the numerous psychological
and psychologistic ones. Judging by their attitudes and methods, they definitely
cannot be counted among those who tackle the problem of the categories. Even
where they do, in their own way, speak of categories, they are not acquainted with
the problem. The ‘pragmatic’ deformation of the problem is of just as little concern
to us. Those who explain the categories as fictions (e.g., Vaihinger) have apparently
no clue that what is in question here is an independent existence of principles that
scoffs at every human ‘as if.’8
Now what does the idea of philosophia prima require in light of this problem? It
is easy to say. It requires the reestablishment of the natural relation between the
contrasting pairs ‘subject-object’ and ‘principle-concretum,’ their cross-dimension-
ality or orthogonality. Consciousness and the object must each have its own
categories, just as they are two completely heterogeneous types of concretum. How
the two systems of principles then relate to one another is a further question for
category research itself, and is impossible to decide before such research, based only
on systematic-speculative viewpoints. It is indeed easy to foresee that they must at
least partially coincide with one another, but it remains a priori self-evident that
even in their relational coincidence one and the same category cannot simply be the
same [in its role] as a cognitive category and [in its role] as an ontological category.
Every single region of the concrete must have its own principles: for
consciousness, principles of consciousness; for knowledge, principles of cognition;
for being as such its own ontological principles; and of course for real being,
principles of the real, for ideal being [290], principles of ideality. The error of
subjectivity may be viewed from this perspective as a special case of the error of
heterogeneity. It too consists in the illegitimate borrowing of particular regional
categories and of their application to the whole; in this case, using subjective
categories for the real object. The difference between this case of the illicit
encroachment of foreign categories in contrast to others lies merely in its greater
consequentiality for the problem of the ontological categories, as well as in the
speculative heights and the intrinsic strength of the systems which are based on it.

3.6 The Error of Normativism

Recently, Rickert and his school proposed the theory that categories are norms and
that their genuine essence is axiological. According to this interpretation, behind
every ‘is’ there is a hidden ‘ought’; the latter makes an appearance in the principles
as ‘validity for something.’ The ontically real is subordinated to the value standpoint
in this manner, stripping it of its autonomy. The fact that the most prominent
representatives of this theory are idealists has nothing to do with the thesis itself.
The thesis is in fact common to all teleological systems, without distinction between
idealism and realism. Its fusion with idealism goes back to Fichte (so I will call this
the Fichtean Error), who expanded the Kantian ‘primacy of the practical’ to the

8
Vaihinger (1911) Philosophie des Als-Ob, Chapters 37–40.

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point where all ontological lawfulness is to be seen as self-determination of an

absolute activity. The character of the Ought is transferred to the principles by this
means. In addition, just as in his own time it was objected to Fichte that the
lawfulness peculiar to Nature, in contrast to that of the Ought, is lost in this way,
today one cannot avoid making the objection to Rickert and Lask that the
ontological problem has already been decided in advance by them—not in favor of
the subjective sphere of course, but in favor of the sphere of values.
Of course, for deontological idealism this is quite appropriate. However, the
problem of the categories is fundamentally falsified in this way—independently,
indeed, of whether normativism is metaphysically justified or not. This is precisely
what is in question, and can only be determined by an exact analysis of
intercategorial relations. Only such analysis can determine whether ontological
principles stand under axiological principles, or perhaps axiological under
ontological principles, or neither of these, and what the positive relation between
both types of principles consists in overall. Thus, here too there is usurpation of one
by the other through the speculative prejudgment in favor of the primacy of value,
an illicit crossing of categories into foreign territory, an ‘-ism,’ in short, a version of
the error of heterogeneity.
Now this version of the error has achieved a particular significance in the history
of philosophical thinking that is easily seen [291] when we set aside idealistic
interpretations of it. Despite its being easily detectable, this error is perhaps the most
pervasive; only a few systems (and not even the most significant ones) have avoided
it. Most major types of philosophical Weltanschauung are in principle teleological.
A palpable normativism already exists in the Platonic theory of the Ideas: the Ideas
are the Ideals of being and all things have the propensity to imitate them, but fall
short of their perfection. Similarly, the Aristotelian finality of natural processes is
referred to the telos of formation, the entelechy. This type of teleology still reigns
uninterrupted, though in a diverse variety of manifestations, throughout Scholas-
ticism, in the Cusan, in Bruno, Leibniz, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Lotze, and
Eduard von Hartmann.
It is the nature of all teleology to be grounded axiologically. The core thesis is the
primacy of value, whether it is a numerically singular value or a whole system of
values. Purposive activity is conditioned by the absolute validity of certain contents,
which appear as points of orientation or as the locomotive goals themselves. This in
turn presupposes that they somehow possess a potency by their very nature to be
goals, i.e., to substantively [inhaltlich] determine a real process of becoming, to
direct it and to make it a meaningful process of actualization. It is this peculiar force
which constitutes the axiological character of such contents. Every being-an-end
[Zwecksein] is necessarily referred back to the being-of-value [Wertsein], indepen-
dently of whether or not the value quality of this value-being is known or not. There
are teleological systems in which this value quality remains completely unknown,
though usually an at least dim consciousness of the value peeks through.
It is well known how this teleology is connected with the idea of God, the belief
in providence, and even with mythological anthropomorphism, and how the human
soul’s strongest, eternal desires are concealed in it as its most inner motives. In a
certain sense, all teleology of nature and world-teleology (also, e.g., teleology of

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history) is anthropomorphism, formally speaking. What it does is ascribe to the

world-process, whether in part or as a whole, precisely the same purposive action
that we know as a given phenomenon exclusively in the activity of human beings.
We do not have to decide here whether the teleological image of the world is
metaphysically legitimate or not. Only categorial analysis itself can contribute
something to the answer to this question, and only it can ascertain objectively
[sachlich] and without bias the inner relationship of the category of purpose to other
categories. Here we are engaged in the crudest preparatory work for a possible
categorial analysis. It is all the more important for this preparatory work to see
clearly that in [292] all teleological speculation—no matter how seductive its
perspective may be—lies an illicit usurpation, the category of purpose crossing over
the border of its proper domain, an unfounded expansion of its applicability that can
be justified with reference to no actually given phenomenon. No matter how we
look at the question, we only know with certainty that human beings are purposeful,
that values are determining factors for them and serve as norms for them. We have
no direct inner testimony that something similar also applies to things, or to the
world as a whole, no matter how impressive in many particulars the analogies of the
unfolding of its processes may appear to be. Every reasoning to a principle (the real
determining purpose) based on such an analogy is and remains a subreption.9 A
deep, thousand-year-old custom of thought rooted in folk mythology has virtually
sanctified this subreption. Soberly viewed, however, it is a source of immeasurable
distortion of philosophical problems. The ontological problem is the most
endangered by it. This error is most to be blamed for the mistrust that ontology
encounters in philosophy to this day. This mistrust is not entirely unjustified, for a
veritable biblical flood of prejudices, half-baked popular philosophies, and
scientifically totally unverifiable ideas is entrenched behind this imperceptible
subreption, encouraged and deliberately obscured by every all-too-human inclina-
tion of the soul and theoretical half-measure.
A cancerous sore on the body of philosophy as a whole is hidden within the error
of normativism and every form of closely related ontological teleology—one of the
original sins of the old metaphysics that even the Kantian critique could not uproot,
because, despite the Critique of Judgment, it could not really see through it. A
critically founded ontology must above all proceed critically on this point as well.
Remedying this prejudice must lie as close to its heart as rectifying the ‘ontological
proof of God’s existence.’ In fact, the latter can serve as a model analogy, in both a
positive and a negative sense: just as no one would toss out the concept of God just
because the ‘ontological’ argument is not sound, no one will let the possibility of a
world-teleology go just because the analogy on which it is based is insufficient for
its proof. Proofs of true premises can be false. As speculative philosophical
presuppositions, however, both theses equally miss the mark. The telos of the world
can neither be philosophically demonstrated nor proven false, just as little as can the

9
Kant uses this term to name a fallacy that confuses what belongs to the understanding with what is
proper to sensibility. More generally, it means systematically mistaking one kind of thing for another, and
applies to the ‘‘error of heterogeneity’’ [TR].

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Axiomathes (2012) 22:315–354 337

existence of God; the former is just as little to be taken up into the foundation of the
system as the latter.
Categories are in themselves, in other words, in no way norms, ends, or even
values. It is a matter for prima philosophia, research into principles, to decide all of
the questions previously resolved by subreptions. What really is the positive [293]
relation of categories to values? Are the latter, as it were, categories sui generis?
Could they be superordinate to ontological categories in perhaps some other way?

3.7 The Error of Rationalism

It is a generally accepted belief that principles are by their very nature ‘rational.’
Both meanings of ‘rational’ (the logical and the gnoseological) may alternate almost
without affecting the thesis. If one substitutes ‘logical’ for ‘rational,’ then the thesis
is nearly that of conceptuality, the Aristotelian error. When one makes ‘rational’ a
synonym with ‘intelligible’ the situation is different. We are only dealing with the
latter case here.
Many theories admit that a concretum may be unintelligible in many different
respects. But they will not admit this possibility when it comes to the principles
upon which the concreta are based. Principles are regarded as entirely cognizable;
they are given directly to consciousness, while the concretum is not given, or is
given only approximately (perhaps ‘confusedly’). In antiquity we find the opposite
thesis. Plato knew the difficulty of gaining a vision of the Ideas, he knew how
incomplete and merely approximately adequate everything that human thinking can
grasp of the realm of the Ideas is, and how it requires a particular ‘hypothetical’
method in order to go to work on making contact with this unapproachable realm.
The idea of the good is withheld from all genuine vision. Plotinus even coined for
the latter the phrase ‘beyond the intelligible,’ which expresses the unintelligibility of
the principle in a precise concept.
It is otherwise with the leading thinkers of Modernity, especially Descartes. In his
work all cognitive comprehension of things is based on an apriorism of principles,
and this means, moreover, an immediate intuitive givenness of the principles. The
deeply rooted and threefold prejudice we are dealing with here we owe to the great
rationalists, and its three basic claims are most easily grasped in their historical
coinages themselves.
At the basis of the Cartesian error lies the prejudice of simplicity: the principles
are simplices, they emerge through analysis as ultimate requisita [properties], and
the concretum is an aggregate complex of them. This is plausible, but is inadequate.
There are highly complex principles that are themselves already combinations of
simpler categorial elements, without thereby giving up the independence generally
characteristic of principles. It is also likely that the much misunderstood [294] motto
‘simplex sigillum veri’ [the simple is a sign of the true] tacitly underlies the
Cartesian error. It is a proposition which, in and of itself, could very well be true for
cognitive categories (though actually it is not applicable to them either), though for
ontological categories it is completely out of place. The research into principles
performed by Descartes and his followers is still very primitive. For him everything
principle-like was held to be in itself simple. He did not know that in fact ultimate

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categorial elements are really something very dubious, something that cannot be
directly grasped in any principle that can be exhibited, or in any group of such
principles. It is only the more complex categories that can be grasped in an
approximate way, but as soon as we precipitate the elements out of their complex
forms they become ungraspable. What we take to be ultimate, still-conceivable
elements are not simples.
Secondly, the genuine prejudice of rational cognizability is implicated here. The
simplices are supposed to be at the same time the maxime notae or per se notae, that
which is ‘earlier in the order of cognition’ (cognitione prius). They are, then,
gnoseologically not only the prius in the order of cognition but also the a priori
cognized! This is the perpetually misunderstood aspect of the concept of idea
innata, for the consciousness of these ideas is in no way contained directly in the
consciousness of things [Sachbewusstsein] based on them. Generally speaking, the
gnoseological relation is completely the opposite. Principles of cognition do not at
all need to be cognitions of principles. What is known through a principle is not the
principle itself. They are conditions of cognition, but are not themselves objects
known; that is, they are the first bases of cognition, but they are far from being the
first things to be known. They usually remain for their part completely unknown; in
any case, cognition by means of them is independent of their being-known or
unknown, and so too from their being-knowable or unknowable. Consequently, it
does not lie in the essence of the principles of cognition to be cognizable, and—we
may add based on the widest historical experience—where they actually are known
(in philosophical epistemology) this knowledge may never be called the first and
most immediate, but rather the last, the most mediated and conditioned.
What holds for cognitive principles must hold to an even greater degree for
ontological principles, where not even the semblance of paradox speaks against it.
Only the prejudice of conceptuality, as well as that of subjectivity, could deceive us
about this. In contrast, once one has grasped that the object has its own proper
categories, independent of the categories of consciousness, and that all conceptu-
ality is only a secondary grasp of an object in concepts by the subject, then it
becomes evident that there is absolutely no reason to treat the principles of the
object as more knowable than the concrete object itself. There is a series of
irrefutable reasons suggesting that they are in fact even an appreciable shade less
knowable than the objects, reasons which categorial analysis itself explains and
which cannot be provided in advance of such analysis.10
Thirdly, the specific prejudice that principles are immediately self-evident is also
entailed here. This means more than mere cognizability in general; it means a priori
cognizability, posited purely of itself, without the support of experience. This also
10
I can indicate at least the main headings of the major arguments here: (1) Categories that are at all
conceivable are complex, some of extraordinary complexity, but ultimate categorial elements are not
conceivable. (2) All categories that are in any way dimensional contain an element of infinity. (3) Along
with structural elements (form, law, relation) most categories contain factors of substrate as well, which
can in no way be reduced to formal features. (4) Even the structures (forms, laws, relations) are as such
not completely rational. (5) What remains unintelligible in all categories is the ‘why,’ the reason for its
Sosein [specific character]. The major points of these arguments can be found in Logos V, ‘Über die
Erkennbarkeit des Apriorischen,’ pp. 313–325; in this volume pp. 206–217; as well as Metaphysik der
Erkenntnis, Chapter 30.

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comes across in the Cartesian formulations ‘per se notae’ and ‘cognitione prius.’
Descartes believed in an intuitus purus that would amount to an immediate
consciousness of principles, and here lies one of the historical roots of the Kantian
error. When considering the matter itself, at least generally speaking, it is precisely
the reverse. Cognitive principles are, as we noted, the prius of knowledge, but for
this reason they are not themselves known, and therefore also not known a priori.
They are the ontological [seiend] prius of the cognition of objects, but not
themselves grasped as such in the process of cognition. As far as they are, for their
part, really cognizable, this cognizability is not an a priori sort, a result of direct
intuition, but is precisely an indirect kind, conditioned in the highest degree by the
posterius. If one asks how such principles are at all known, then the only possible
answer is: from the concretum. The concretum is always—at least in the domain of
cognition of the real—the a posteriori given. Principles are the structural elements
of the concrete and can only be apprehended as such, and only in the concrete—or,
more exactly, can only be gleaned from it by means of analysis and reflection,
where an element of the hypothetical always adheres to what is so ascertained. Since
antiquity this method has been called the analytical or the hypothetical method, and,
with a definite awareness of its ‘upwardly’ directed tendency (‘anabasis’), it has
been contrasted with deductive apodictics.
This does not mean we are left with an empirical cognition of principles, for
when the analytical path has led to the categories the latter have to be apprehended
in turn or made self-evident in themselves. However, this self-evidence and this
vision is precisely mediated, and indeed mediated in characteristic fashion by the
posterius; thus it is not a genuine a posteriori knowledge, but perhaps [296] one
might say ex posteriori. The prius of cognition is itself, however, not in the least
affected by this conditionedness of the ex posteriori cognition of categories. It
certainly is not this cognition itself, nor its principle, but rather its object, the
category itself.
The following results for category research from what has been said. (1)
Categories exist entirely independently of the degree of their cognizability. (2) They
are in fact only partially cognizable and categorial analysis will encounter, as might
be expected, immovable limits to rationality in every direction of its advance. (3)
The theory of categories must, without qualification, acknowledge these limits and,
as far as possible, help define them. It cannot take them to be the limits of problems,
even less as limits grounded in the things themselves, i.e., in categorial being. They
are indeed insurmountable, but only gnoseological and not ontological limits. (4)
The system of categories which it can articulate must necessarily remain at best only
a portion of the whole; it can only approximately coincide with the system of
existing, independent principles that it strives to make explicit. (5) The cognitive
categories are in no better position in this regard than ontological categories;
epistemology is not in any way more intelligible than ontology.

3.8 The Error of Total Identity

The greatest simplification of world-image that can be imagined is the identity

thesis of Parmenides: ‘Thinking and being are one and the same.’ The problem of

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the categories surprisingly shrivels up in light of it. If there is only one single region
of concrete entities, then there can only be one series of principles. The Identity
philosophy of German Idealism made extensive use of this offensive strategy. Such
closed systematic edifices as the 1801 Schellingian system and the great Hegelian
system were only possible by virtue of this identification of the ‘subjective and
objective’ or ‘the rational and the real.’ It is of no concern that these systems, in
contrast to the Eleatic one, are meant fundamentally to be idealistic, i.e., that they
shift the weight within this identity to the side of the subjective or to ‘reason.’ This
makes no difference with respect to the identity thesis. The main point in it is the
unity of the series of principles. This is what they have in common with the Eleatic
system.
And yet, this is precisely their weakness. They contradict the phenomenon as it is
given. It suffices to direct our attention to the phenomenon of cognition in order to
see this. Cognition can only exist where there is a contraposition of subject and
object, it consists in a particular type of relationship between them. If the two
coincided, then the relation would also collapse into nothing. A relation can exist
only between the non-identical. Iden-[297]tity is cancelation of relation. All strict
identity philosophy cancels out the problem of knowledge. It is no wonder that
Schelling’s system of 1801 had nothing to offer epistemology, and that Hegel nearly
converted the problem itself into its opposite. This grandest of all metaphysical
theses was also not upheld in antiquity, as is evident. Neither Plato nor Plotinus,
who stood nearest to it, had ventured to implement it. It is easy to see that the same
aporia as that in the problem of cognition (i.e., relation of two heterogeneous terms)
has to recur in the problem of action, of the will, and others. Here too contraposition
is throughout the condition of relation.
Category research cannot get involved with this monstrous simplification. The
‘Eleatic Error’ means nothing else than the radical falsification of the category
problem, and indirectly the falsification of the ontological problem as well; yet the
natural point of departure for ontological thinking is the objective stance toward
being [Gegenstandsstellung des Seins]. It must accept the juxtaposition-in-tension
of the two domains of the phenomenally given concrete, namely, consciousness and
real external world, to the fullest extent possible—at the risk of obtaining two
fundamentally different series of categories.

3.9 The Error of Categorial Identity

The thesis of categorial identity is in many ways more critical and more modest than
the Eleatic thesis. It is not Being and Thinking, not Subject and Object that are
regarded as identical, but only their principles. The duality of worlds—that of
consciousness and that of the object—is not infringed upon, is not fused into one.
Nevertheless there is an identical element which binds both, indeed binds them at
their root: their mutually shared categories.
The most well-known version of this idea is the interpretation Kant gave to it:
experience and object of experience are not the same, but they have the same
‘conditions of possibility;’ recall the familiar formula at the conclusion of the
section on the supreme basic principle of all synthetic judgments. The gnoseological

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basis for this identity of principles is the fact of a priori cognition. Evidently, a
subject can only know about the determinations of an object heterogeneous to him if
the inner principles upon which this knowledge rests correspond with the principles
of the object. In the phenomenon of a priori knowledge, therefore, there lies an
extraordinarily valuable starting point for the orientation of category research: a
certain identity must exist between subject and object, and we cannot be dealing
with two completely heterogeneous systems of categories.
Nevertheless, the greatest metaphysical emphasis on the identity thesis is not
present in systems like Kant’s, where [298] a posteriori cognition is allocated a
broad, independent leeway, but rather in systems where apriorism is made absolute,
i.e., where all cognition—also what is apparently a posteriori cognition—is referred
back to it. We find the archetype of such a system in Leibniz. The individual monad
‘represents’ the world. Its ‘representation’ is, where it reaches the height of
consciousness, knowledge. The monad, including the sum total of its representa-
tions, is a world of its own, a cosmos within the cosmos; thus it is not at all identical
with the macrocosmic world of all monads, indeed, it is not even directly connected
to it (it is ‘without windows’). Its representing is a purely inner constructing, and its
knowing is an a priori knowing without remainder. What generates the correspon-
dence, or even the relatedness of representations to the represented real? ‘Pre-
established harmony’ is just a catchphrase which explains nothing. The actual core
of the theory is the unity and eternity of the ‘ideas’ or ‘eternal truths.’ These are one
and the same for the monads represented and for those doing the representing—
without remainder and deep into the singularity of their complex coherence. Thus,
the correspondence is established, the ‘simultaneous chiming of the clocks’ and the
constancy of the relation between ‘body and soul.’
Precisely in the case of Leibniz one clearly sees that his absolute apriorism
overshoots the mark. The identity of principles is indeed sufficient for it, but it
reaches further than the phenomenon warrants. Absolute apriorism does not
correspond to the phenomenon: a priori knowledge finds its limit in empiricism, but
the former has no room for the latter in it. The error becomes more apparent still
when we look at it from the other direction. Let there be just one series of principles,
valid for two completely different worlds; must we not ask how it happens that the
two worlds are really different? If everything in them is in principle the same, how
can they then be two worlds at all? Must they not necessarily be indistinguishably
one and the same—precisely according to the Leibnizian lex identitatis
indiscernibilium?
Even when one pays no attention to this metaphysical aporia, a completely
different, unavoidable gnoseological aporia crops up in its place. If cognitive and
ontological categories are identical without remainder, then mustn’t everything that
exists be knowable, and even knowable a priori? Doubtless that is also Leibniz’s
opinion. But it contradicts the phenomenon of cognition, in which the limits of
cognizability—and definitely of a priori cognizability—play a very special role. If
one analyzes the phenomenon of cognition in a nonpartisan way, there can be no
disagreement that the limit of rationality is itself a phenomenon of cognition. The
illegitimacy of absolute apriorism lies in ignoring it, and this is the Leibnizian Error.
[299]

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Obviously, another error of principle is still implicit in the error of categorial

identity. The Leibnizian Error is definitely more modest about many things than the
Eleatic error. But still too much is posited as identical in the two series. We must
limit the identity even more. The categories of the subject and of the object can only
be partially identical, and must be partially distinct from one another. Partial
identity is of course the minimum of identity that is required. The system of
ontological categories must evidently be richer than that of cognitive categories,
since the partial unintelligibility of the object signifies properties of the object that
the knowing subject cannot represent; in other words, there must be ontological
categories that are not at the same time cognitive categories. There must therefore
be a limit to the identity of ontological and cognitive categories in the realm of
categories themselves. Indeed, this limit must evidently correspond directly to the
limit of intelligibility of the object; i.e., the object is exactly as knowable a priori as
its [ontological] categories are at the same time cognitive categories.11
This issue is also of decisive importance for ontology, even aside from its central
significance for epistemology. Five conclusions can be drawn from it.
1. First, one thing it makes evident is that the ontological categories can never be
exhausted by the problem of knowledge. Thus, it is a fundamental mistake of
contemporary philosophy to wish to overcome the problem of the categories
with a gnoseological attitude. Instead, we can only comprehend it from an
ontological point of view. Kant also did not take this fact into account. His
interest in the problem of the categories was a purely gnoseological one.
Nevertheless, in Kant, unlike in Leibniz, we find an awareness of the limits of
categorial identity: objecthood per se is not exhausted in the ‘objects of possible
experience’ according to Kant. There is beyond the latter the ‘transcendental
object,’ which as such is not cognizable, because the totality of its conditions
are not included in the ‘conditions of the possibility of experience.’ It is by
means of the doctrine of the ‘thing in itself’ as noumenon that Kant outgrew his
own characterization of the problem and prepared the point of departure for a
critical ontology in the problem of knowledge itself. At this point his critique
has become critical of itself. The doctrine of the thing in itself is its most critical
accomplishment.
2. There is something further that the theory of categories can learn from this
issue. In a partial identity of ontological and cognitive categories it is not at all
necessary that individual [300] categories of a higher (more complex) order
(which in themselves encompass a whole system of categorial factors) stand
completely ‘this side’ or completely beyond the limit of identity. It is instead
quite possible that this limit runs right through the middle and splits a category
into two parts, as it were, of which only one has the character of a cognitive
principle, while the other is merely an ontological principle. The partial identity
thesis is not cancelled by this means, but primarily involves just the simpler
categorial elements. For a priori cognition of the object, cognition which is
11
The limit of identity has nothing to do with the partial unintelligibility of the categories themselves.
The cognizability of the concrete object is in no way dependent upon the cognizability of its principles.
The Leibnizian Error is entirely indifferent to the Cartesian Error.

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itself of course only partially legitimate, it evidently suffices when there are
some categorial elements that are identical for subject and object in the
complex whole of the higher category.
3. In this connection, a task of greatest importance arises for category research.
The individual categories—certainly the higher ones at least—are, in their role
as cognitive categories, not the same as they are [in their role] as ontological
categories. They bear the same names in both domains (such as space, time,
substance, causality) and rightfully so, for there must be some underlying
identical element in them, but their categorial content is in many ways different
in the two cases. Moreover, the limit of the a priori cognizability of the object
lies in this difference. Categorial analysis therefore has to study each individual
category separately as an ontological and as a gnoseological category, and has
to determine its specific variations.
It can also be expressed the following way. Each category that falls at all within
the realm of identity simultaneously belongs to both spheres, the ontically real
and the gnoseological actual sphere, but it spans this double allocation with
only one part of its nature, in the other part it is split or torn apart by it.
Obviously, the division for each category is also substantively different, such
that an unlimited multiplicity of gradations between the extremes of full
identity and of complete nonidentity is possible. Here is a new, as yet
completely fallow field for research, undoubtedly rich with consequences, with
whose disclosure and fruitful treatment the task of a critical ontology can first
genuinely begin. The comprehensive view that is needed here cannot be
achieved through a deduction from universal standpoints, but can only be won
by detailed phenomenological-analytical study of the individual categories. It is
self-evident that from here on out the problem of knowledge must undergo a
rebirth that would allow a deeper penetration into its substantive details than
ever allowed by any type of procedure that drifts about in the universal. [301]
4. The consequences lead yet further in another direction. The relationship
between the spheres of the two kinds of categories (that proves to be one of
partial identity) paves the way for the treatment of all similar sphere-
relationships. In fact, ontology does not only have to do with the opposition
between subject and object. What exists [Das Seiende selbst] evinces another
kind of cleavage into real and ideal being, indifferent to the former opposition,
where the ideal is understood to include the being of logical structures, of
mathematical objects, and of essences of all kinds. Thus within being a real and
an ideal sphere stand counterpoised, both existing completely independently
with their respective entities, both spheres objects of possible cognition (at least
within the limits of their rationality). These two spheres also stand under
categories, and likewise under partially identical ones. The reasons for this may
be analyzed in the relation between mathematical lawfulness and natural
lawfulness, as elsewhere. Therefore, there is also an identity relation between
two series of categories here, and indeed one different from that between object
categories and cognitive categories, and this too is a partial identity.

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It is easy to foresee that the boundary of this identity, since it bears on the same
ontological categories as the former and also encompasses the same complex of
categories, also cannot spare the integrity of these categorial complexes, and
that it runs right through them and must cut across their course. So, the task of
the theory of categories is expanded and complicated by a dimension of
substantive diversity. The difference of the spheres means nothing other than
that one and the same category is, as category of the ideal sphere, not absolutely
the same as category of the real. Categorial analysis has to investigate in just
which categorial elements the divergence exists for each individual category.
This procedure is the more significant because it is the only means we have to
determine the difference and ontologically positive relation between the ideal
and real spheres. Since it deals with the relation between two ways of being
[Seinsweisen], the key to this investigation lies in the domain of modal
categories, whose meaning and inter-modal lawfulness is in fact an extraor-
dinarily different one in the two spheres.12
5. The multiplicity of the spheres standing under categories—and, as noted, under
partially identical ones—is not exhausted just yet. For example, it cannot be
disputed that the inner world of the subject forms a world unto itself with its
specific subjective phenomena (not its objective, cognitive factors, which are
constituents of a transcendental relation), which is definitely also a real existent
and to that extent immanent to the real [301] sphere, but takes up a special place
within it given its peculiar nature. In addition to the real, ideal, and
gnoseological actual spheres, this psychical sphere may be added as a fourth.
In it too there is a modified recurrence of the categories. Setting aside further
elaboration on the multiplicity of spheres, readily understood in any case, the
least that categorial analysis must accomplish is the consideration of each
individual category under the synoptic view of these four problem spheres, i.e.,
to work out the specific modification of each category in the different spheres as
well as their underlying identical elements.
This is of course a task that is apt to lead categorial analysis to grow to become
a whole distinctive area of study of its own. I envision the nature and the idea of
a critical ontology, and that of a genuine, legitimate philosophia prima, one
oriented to the multiplicity of the phenomena, to consist in pursuit of the
prospects opened up by this task. It is self-evident that such a synoptic view of
the spheres, as a theory of the fundamental domains of substantive phenomena,
constitutes a comprehensive part of category research, by whose means alone it
may be completely circumscribed (though only ‘in Idea’).

3.10 The Error of Systematic Monism

Those philosophers who bother with research into principles, almost without
exception, proceed from the presupposition that the system of principles has to top-

12
I have attempted to provide a first approach to the investigation indicated here in Kantstudien XX,
1915, ‘Logische und ontologische Wirklichkeit.’ In this volume, page 220.

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out in a single highest principle upon which all others depend. This presupposition
is readily understood. Some reasoning such as this is usually implied: there are more
general and more specific principles and the relation between them can only be one
of logical subsumption; thus, the system takes the form of a ‘pyramid’ and this form
inevitably demands a highest ‘peak,’ a kind of unitary point in which all the threads
of dependency run together.
We would like to completely disregard the fact that the error of conceptuality (the
Aristotelian Error) is blatantly contained in this inherited image of the logical,
conceptual pyramid. This should not be understood to mean that all historical
systems of categories slavishly imitated the relation of formal-logical subsumption
and containment. In fact, there are a number of quite different viewpoints here. In
many cases the driving force of the intended stratification of categories is
teleological; naturally a universal finalist nexus necessarily has the tendency toward
unity of the telos. However, the schema of the unity postulate is everywhere the
same and springs from the same hidden assumption, namely, that there can be a
unity of the system only by virtue of the comprehensive dependence of the members
on a central point. [303]
The demand for a ‘highest principle,’ the ‘unconditioned,’ or for the ‘absolute’ is
rooted in this assumption. Plato’s arche anhupothetos and Aristotle’s ‘first mover’
are, in these accounts, placed above the realm of ideas or the realm of forms. The
classic form of the idea of unity appears in Plotinus. He called the highest principle
simply ‘the One,’ in itself beyond all multiplicity and separation, thus also ‘beyond
being and thinking.’ The historical tendency that proceeded from this point led to
the idea of the coincidentia oppositorum, which according to the Cusan, for
instance, crowns the system of all existing things.
There is no reason at all to object to monism in this sense, taken on its own. It is
as little contradictory as is world-teleology or the cosmological concept of God. It is
also just as little corroborated by phenomena. That makes it mistaken, at least as an
expectation. If a categorial analysis had led us to it then it would be a different story.
However, where we do find it, no one speaks of such a discovery; everywhere it is
simply presupposed, whether explicitly or implicitly. Cusa and Plotinus, Aristotle
and Plato simply comply with a methodological-systematic requirement for unity,
they hypostatize a bare postulate. Plotinus deserves praise for his honesty, for he at
least clearly formulated this methodological issue. We may call this prejudice the
Plotinian Error in his honor.
Even setting aside the misleading ‘systematic’ aspect of the unity postulate, we
still have to admit that the assumption of a single highest principle seems hardly
avoidable for other reasons. For as long as we believe in the complete intelligibility
of the categories, i.e., as long as we remain under the spell of the Cartesian error, we
are prone to it. If a pervasive interconnection of categories has to exist somehow,
why not state it in the form of a fundamental unifying principle? The highest unity
must surely then be rationally demonstrable. This type of rationalism is clearly
displayed in Spinoza’s single substance, in Kant’s transcendental apperception, in
Fichte’s absolute Ego. The reasoning is at least consistent when it joins the two
prejudices together. These two prejudices even mutually support one another. It is
definitely otherwise with Plotinus and the Cusan, for instance, where they

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understand the unintelligibility of the unity sought. With what justification could it
even be claimed that that which lies above and beyond the intelligible principles
(Plotinus’s Ideas) really has the character of a universal and nevertheless unified
point? One cannot in fact know this at all. The presumption to have such knowledge
nullifies the very unintelligibility of the highest principle that was conceded earlier.
If we fully appreciate the partial unintelligibility of the categories, even only in
principle, then we are easily convinced that it is impossible to have one highest
principle of unity, or even the [304] concept of one. If we knew that the system of
categories had the form of a logical pyramid, then we would also have an at least
formal knowledge about the peak of the pyramid. We do not have even this bit of
knowledge, however. We are only familiar with a relatively small portion of the
whole realm of principles and, as is easy to see, a portion of middling degree of
complexity. The most complex and most differentiated categories are unintelligible
precisely due to their high complexity (e.g., the categories of the living world), and
the simplest and most elementary categories are likewise unintelligible, due to their
simplicity and irreducibility. If all conceiving is conceiving through another thing, a
simpler one, then the simplest remains eternally inconceivable. Consequently, in the
realm of categories there is a lower and a higher limit of intelligibility
[Rationalitätsgrenze]; and only that which is between these two limits is intelligible
[rational], at least partially. We do not even know this domain of principles nearly
well enough to be able to ascertain whether the system converges toward the ‘top’ or
not. In fact, even between the two limits we always know only individual groups of
categories, not a continuum of principles, as the Hegelian Logic may lead one to
believe, and between the groups of categories there are gaping holes whose
substantive fullness we cannot divine. Finally, granted that we could learn of a
convergence toward the top from the total structure of the knowable portion of the
realm of principles, this insight would still not suffice to disclose the continuation of
the convergence to an absolutely first unity beyond the upper limit of intelligibility.
The lines converging on this side of the limit could also diverge again beyond it.
The law of their provenance would surely not be known either.
In fact, then, there is no possibility of divining the presence or absence of an
absolute principle of unity from the total structure of the partially knowable portion
of the realm of principles. The possibility that the system has no ‘peak’ must remain
open, that is, that it diverges again toward the top or that it disperses into a plurality
of highest categorial elements. The fact is that the last, still just visible stratum near
the top shows a wide diversity of completely independent categorial elements whose
number and more exact demarcation is admittedly difficult to assign. It may
nonetheless be gathered with a high degree of probability from certain indicators
that beyond this stratum there is still something more. For example, we see this from
the fact that these higher categories do not bear the character of ultimate elements,
but instead show the seams of a garment which we are just not able to unstitch. Just
what that ‘more’ is, whether it is a further elementary system or a singular principle,
cannot be seen at all. The only evident fact is that within the ultimate intelligible
stratum all members are reciprocally conditioned by one another, such that in a
certain sense each is the supreme principle and yet each is dependent upon all the
others. [305]

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Plato was the first to reveal this state of affairs in his late period (Parmenides,
Sophist) and called it the ‘interweaving’ of the Ideas. He accomplished the first
critical overcoming of categorial monism in these writings, in contrast to his own
earlier teaching on the ‘Idea of the Good’ (Republic, Book VI). He states quite
explicitly that the supreme principle in the realm of the Ideas is not a ‘One,’ but
rather a ‘community’ (koinonia), an all-around community and confluence of
principles—thus, [it is the idea of] the System as such, the interconnection of
coordinated elements. If one objects in this case that the interconnection itself is
precisely the higher principle of unity for this community, then one misses the point.
The principle of interconnection, rather, stands right in the midst of a number of
interconnecting elements.
Those who keep their distance from the problem of the categories, like most
writers today, and do not acknowledge this systematic character to be always
already immanent in all categories, will without fail make another favorite age-old
objection: is a pluralism of highest principles even thinkable? Must there not be a
higher, binding unity, since they necessarily constitute a system? The answer is that
the unity of interconnection must of course exist, but it need not be the punctual
unity of a single, nor a superordinate, principle. It may also simply be the implicit
systematic unity existing in the elements themselves and in nothing else. This
becomes most evident by analogy with more concrete problems. Older theories of
the cosmos assumed that there existed a central material body of the universe, first
Earth, then the central Fire (Pythagoreans), then the Sun (Copernicus), Sirius
(Kant), until finally more precise investigations showed that there is no such central
body, and that the cosmic system exists without such a thing. The case is similar for
biological theories. The unifying principle of life was sought in the organism—in
the blood, in the heart, the liver, the brain, in the soul as vital principle, in order
finally to realize after all these false starts that there is no such unitary principle at
all, that there is only the system of organs instead (which is a system of systems),
and furthermore its own system of processes, functions, interconnections, depen-
dencies, and so on. In biology, just as in cosmology, unity is precisely the
categorially secondary moment. The demand for a primary unity, intelligible in a
central point, is a purely subjective postulate, a rationalistic atavism of human
thinking.
Of course, we are not enough advanced in our survey of the system of categories
to be able to make a decision about whether such a unity exists or not. The
considerations above do not contradict [306] the existence of a highest principle of
unity. Only the justification for basing a theory of categories on the assumption of
such a principle is contradicted. This point of departure is a subreption. Only
categorial analysis can, at best, decide whether the assumption is justified or not;
one may not anticipate it in advance. In fact, even categorial analysis cannot decide
the question, at least given the current state of the research. Therefore, if one wants
to proceed with critical acumen, one must provisionally leave the question open and
content oneself with a plurality of ultimate conceivable elements.
This correction also has a not insignificant systematic scope. If it held only for
ontological categories then its significance might seem perhaps to be slight—which
is, ultimately, an impression due largely to the claim of the supreme unity of being!

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But the broad scope of philosophia prima extends from the theoretical into the
practical and aesthetic, from ontology to axiology. In them a much more immediate
interest attaches to the question of unity. For example, in ethics an original plurality
of highest values would mean a cleavage of the moral will. The idea of the ‘Good’
therefore has always dictated (the postulate of) unity in the realm of values.
However, to this day a univocal, substantive definition of this idea has not been
achieved; different eras always understood the ‘good’ differently. If, however, with
a rigorously analytical method, we penetrate into that which is still barely
intelligible, then it turns out that behind this apparent relativism of the ‘good’
something completely different is concealed, namely, a highly complex, unified
structure, no less unified for not being a single point. The ‘good’ is a whole system
of component values, and hence it is always perceived only in a fragmentary way.
The narrowness of human value-consciousness does not admit of any other way.
So, in the ethical domain the postulate of unity is a mistaken dogma as well. A
plurality of elements stands uppermost—at least as far as we can see. The realm of
values also has its own upper and lower limits of intelligibility. In the ethical as well
as in the ontological domain, beyond the upper limit there ‘can’ of course still be a
principle of unity. But then the system would have to converge toward the top. We
can discern whether this is the case in the realm of values even less clearly than we
can in the domain of ontological categories and of cognition. The intelligible portion
of the whole is even more narrowly drawn here, the two limits lie closer to one
another and between them the gaps of the incognizable are larger. It may be possible
that this unfavorable situation is due to the only very recent development of
axiology.
It may be expected that in the aesthetic domain the situation is similarly
unfavorable, or probably even more unfavorable. Many reasons can readily be
provided for this. There is still too little genuine axiological analysis available in
this domain to be able to form a definite judgment.

3.11 The Error of the Harmony Postulate

Next to the late Plato, Hegel should be regarded as the thinker who took the
rejection of a punctiform highest unity most seriously. Whoever sees in his concept
of ‘reason’ or in the ‘idea’ such a unified point fundamentally misunderstands the
character of his dialectic. The higher unities that emerge in the dialectic are always
higher syntheses, more complex, more systematic kinds of structures, never simpler
ones. All stages passed through are ‘sublated’ in them, and ‘the truth’ is always only
in ‘the whole.’ In Plato as in Hegel it is the dialectical method that allows this
profound thought to mature and wrests it away, as it were, from the lethargic,
habitual thinking of a lazy, purely formal monism. Dialectic is the natural enemy of
the Plotinian Error. Both Hegel and Plato have been most poorly understood
precisely on this point.
Nevertheless, these critical achievements appear to be paid for by another just as
dogmatic tendency, a tendency which of course does not belong solely to dialectical
thought, but usually emerges more clearly in it than elsewhere—and probably only

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because other errors are overcome by its means. It is the tendency toward
equilibrium, to attunement, towards comprehensive harmony.
A variation on the demand for unity is also implicit here: if there is no
demonstrable unitary point, then unity must still exist in the sense that all principles
are in harmony with one another, i.e., no discrepancies, no contradictions may exist.
Or rather, to the extent that contradictions do arise they must cancel themselves out
by their interrelation in broader contexts. Categorial being must be solid, without a
crack, a hen syneches [one all together] in the Eleatic sense.
One of the oldest pieces of common philosophical wisdom is that the world is
constructed of opposites, that its most universal categories are polarities. The
endeavor to overcome this oppositionality through unification is just as ancient.
Heraclitus preceded everyone with his thesis of the ‘hidden harmony’ in which
everything is resolved; in it all opposites coexist without destruction or cancellation,
they balance the scales, equilibrate. This Heracliteanism rules all through later
antiquity without exception, even where more serious dualisms, such as that
between good and evil, yawn wide. The theodicy of the Stoics also clung firmly to
the harmony of the logos. The Leibnizian theodicy still held to it in essentially the
same way: this is the most perfect world, the existence of evil is assured justification
because the harmony among the principles is also preestablished in this sense.
It has been noted that there is a simplification and rationalization in such a
wholesale procedure by all thinkers who [308] saw the inner antinomies behind the
mere antithetics of the opposites. Since Zeno the presence of antinomies in the
world was a familiar fact to the Eleatics. Consequently, the problem is reversed, and
what is initially given is not univocity, but strife, the coexistence of contradictory
elements. This insight is an indigestible morsel for systematic thinking, and it
contradicts its fundamental law, the principle of non-contradiction. This law states
that the contradictory is impossible.
It took a long time for the uncomfortable idea of an ‘antinomics’ to manage to
achieve at least some slight recognition in face of the so much simpler harmony
postulate. Ancient dialectics was not up to this undertaking. Plato’s antinomies in
the Parmenides stand there isolated and remained unexamined, Aristotle swept them
out with the principium contradictionis, Plotinus regarded the hen as ultima ratio,
the Scholastics believed in the goodness and wisdom of the highest being, the Cusan
resolved all puzzles with the coincidentia oppositorum. The Critique of Pure
Reason was the first to take the problem of the antinomies seriously again.
According to Kant we are dealing with ‘Antinomies of pure Reason’ itself. Reason
is in conflict with itself, since the thesis as well as the antithesis is necessary by the
very nature of reason. This insight was a historical gain. The solutions that Kant
proposed, however, are not equally valuable, for they are conditioned by his
standpoint and are purely idealistic solutions.
At this point, the question ‘Is it necessary that all antinomies be resolved?’
naturally arises. Is there not a kernel of truth in Zeno’s repudiation of all solutions?
Of course, Zeno also went too far, he rejected space, multiplicity and movement
because they are antinomical. Kant also rejected the thesis and antithesis of the
‘mathematical antinomies,’ and he decided in favor of the thesis of the ‘dynamical’
antinomies. Is a middle way between such equally awkward extremes possible?

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Could the antinomy not exist with good reason, without being resolved, but also
without thereby nullifying the subject matter to which it attaches (whether, for
instance, it is extensive infinity or the divisibility of the world)? What right do we
have to give up the thing itself along with its intelligibility? In other words, what if
the antinomy was real, constituted exactly the inner nature of the thing, and all
attempts to resolve it were not only an impossible undertaking, but also wrong-
headed and misguided in principle?
Idealism, of course, cannot entertain this possibility and cannot concede it.
‘Reason’ as principle rallies against it; its law is the principle of non-contradiction
and it cannot get over it. Ontology, however, is not bound to this point of view.
Since antinomies are purely ontological aporias, we are justified in admitting the
possibility of [309] another form of lawfulness for ‘what is’ (with whose lawful
structure we are alone concerned) besides the lawfulness of reason, i.e., we are
justified in canceling [aufzuheben] the principle of contradiction.
Now, the Hegelian dialectic had in fact taken this step. It recognizes contradiction
as ontological [seiend] and its cancellation (the ‘principle of contradiction’) is
sublated [seine Aufhebung ist aufgehoben]. Hegel immediately overstated and
universalized the thesis that everything is in a certain sense also the contrary of itself.
This supercharged thesis results in a kind of uniform schema for the dialectic, but it
does violence to the problem of the categories. Nevertheless, the possibility does exist
of doing justice to the problem of the antinomies. The specialty of the dialectic is to
track down concealed antinomial elements wherever they exist, and it really has
detected them in innumerable cases. This was already true of the dialectics of
antiquity, and for the Hegelian dialectic it is even more the case. But it could not reap
the real benefits of this advantage. Its own nature stood in its way.
The Hegelian dialectic is not only an antithetical method but also a synthetic one.
Every discontinuity [Diskrepanz] that emerges is always already certain of
reunification, each antinomy is sure to be resolved. Hegel’s thinking remains
completely under the sway of the harmony postulate. He only allows the
contradiction in ‘what is’ to hold in order—not to annihilate it—but to overcome
it all the more completely. His whole dialectic is a great chain of solutions to
contradictions revealed. It is this constant triumph of reason over contradiction that
makes one rightfully perplexed by the method. The seriousness of the antinomies is
not done justice in this way. Of course speculative syntheses may easily be
constructed for each yawning antithetical opposition, but artificial syntheses are not
solutions. Even where they are not contrived, but may also be verified in the
phenomena, they are still not solutions. Instead, the antithetical opposition which
one believes is overcome is in truth carried over into the ‘synthesis,’ lives on in it
uninterruptedly and proves that the synthesis is a merely apparent unity.
At least this is how things stand with Hegel whenever he has to deal with
genuine, irresolvable antinomies. This holds good of a great number of developed
theses and antitheses. His method takes the teeth out of the antinomy. For the theory
of the categories this is the really instructive moment in Hegel—instructive in a
negative sense, of course, the Hegelian Error. In fact, no philosopher has been as
close to overcoming the harmony postulate as Hegel. Nonetheless, none has made
such a systematic or such a boundless use of this postulate as he has.

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We would do well to make one thing clear on this point. It does not suffice to say
that the traditional claim that ‘all antinomies must have rational solutions’ is false
and discard it, and claim instead that there may also be irresolvable antinomies.
[310] No, any antinomy capable of resolution was hardly a genuine antinomy at all,
and there was no well-founded contradiction in it. A contradiction that can be
overturned is one that does not even exist. It must have been an imaginary
contradiction from the start, even if this was perhaps a subjectively necessary
imagining. A genuine antinomy has never been resolved. It is the eternal greatness
of Zeno that he would not accept any compromise on this decisive point. His
antinomies are for the most part still not resolved today—certainly not by chance!
The same is true of the Kantian antinomies, despite the ‘solutions’ introduced by
Kant—perhaps with the exception of the antinomy of freedom, but then that is not
even a genuine antinomy.
All genuine antinomies are necessarily irresolvable. This does not make them in
any way meaningless. On the contrary, only in this way are they meaningful. A
soluble antinomy is a square circle. Failure to recognize this self-evident point is the
root of the Hegelian Error. It is a baseless, rationalist prejudice to believe that the
only problems that rightly exist are those that can be resolved by means of reason.
There are irresolvable questions everywhere—even of non-antinomical nature—
which still justifiably exist, and are indeed absolutely unavoidable. All genuine
metaphysical questions are of this type. Why should it be otherwise with this
particular type of question, an antinomy? If anything, the antinomy as such signifies
precisely a kind of problematic sui generis in which its irresolvability is already
visible in the form of the problem itself—namely, in the antithetical opposition, in
the conspicuous and yet unavoidable contradiction. In face of such a problematic all
so-called ‘solutions’ can only be apparent solutions or even complete misconstrual
of the problem. All of them have only a standpoint-conditioned validity, i.e., they
have no philosophical validity at all. They are attempts at the unification or
harmonization of the different, without prior consideration of whether the different
terms require or are capable of being harmonized. The human understanding, ratio,
has the form of unity and univocity, from which stems its tendency to make
everything discrepant agree, to force it under the principle of contradiction at
whatever cost. This is a purely subjective teleology of ratio and is at bottom a
special case of the same rationalism that we have encountered in the Cartesian
Error: the world, the macrocosm, in itself indifferent to all ratio, is measured by the
merely human purpose of wanting to conceive it! It is no wonder that it doesn’t add
up! The Hegelian Error is an astounding testimonium paupertatis of reason,
precisely at the apex of its sure-to-be-victorious self-consciousness. This is one of
the major points where one has to invert the traditional methods of philosophical
practice in order to be placed on the path of a really critical ontology, and
furthermore, of a critical philosophia prima. Hegel rightly [311] saw that
antinomical opposition is not the peculiar form of a few cosmological questions,
but is a universal characteristic of the major fundamental questions of principle.
Taking these reflections into account, the true nature of the ontological
antinomies has not been decided in the least. On the contrary, the positive insight
won here is, in terms of content, negative, a merely critical insight, namely, that we

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are not permitted to state in advance any determinate assumption concerning the
nature of the antinomy. This is because the insolubility may itself signify
completely different things. It appears to be evident with a certain apriority that two
basic options are possible here, which I add tentatively and would not like to be
construed as strict alternatives. It appears to me that work on this problem is not
mature enough for a complete disjunction of the possibilities.
The first possibility is that the conflict lies solely in reason, in thinking, or in the
lawfulness of human cognition, but not in being, i.e., not in the principles themselves,
with whose conception and formulation we are dealing. This would mean that there is
no conflict within being, being would be in itself simple, a harmony. That there
appears to reason to be a conflict in being results from the principles of ratio itself. The
principles are just not sufficient to grasp all of the determinations of being. We know
that not all ontological categories are at the same time cognitive categories. The
disparity would arise solely from the fact that inappropriate categories are applied. So,
in this case the antinomies would not be ontological at all, but purely phenomena of
cognition, and moreover, limit-phenomena of cognition, not antinomies of being but
of reason, just as Kant understood them. Their insolubility would be due merely to the
fact that reason cannot get beyond its own limits, that it can think only under its own
laws, but not under those of being as such. In short, the antinomies are simply a special
case of the unintelligible—either in the concretum or the category, depending upon
which of them the conflict in question bears on. In both instances unintelligibility is
not an exceptional feature.
The other possibility is that the conflict lies in being itself. Then the antinomy is
really an ontological one, the contradiction is real, ‘what is’ is itself in disharmony,
and conflict is its form of being. In this case, one has to accept that the principle of
contradiction is not in fact valid for the ontically real, or is only valid in a qualified
way. However, the phenomenon of cognizing the antinomy would then have a
completely different meaning than in the first case. Namely, if ratio stands under the
law of non-contradiction, then it must necessarily deny the intelligibility of the in-
itself contradictory phenomenon. It can see that a real contradiction is there but it
cannot accept it, cannot recognize it or concede it, cannot believe in it, because its
nature [312] defies reason’s existence. Thus, it cannot take to be valid precisely that
which is real.13,14 Reason is constituted in such a way that it must search and hunt

13
The state of affairs that exists in this case is the converse of the poet’s words:
Leicht beieinander wohnen die Gedanken,
Doch hart im Raume stossen sich die Sachen.
Thoughts together dwell side by side with ease,
But things clash with each other in space harshly.
What the verses say is not false; much is impossible in the real world that thought can effortlessly
construct. It is a mistake to believe that the converse boundary does not exist. Thought is also not in a
position to bring everything together synthetically on its own, whose actual synthesis already exists in
being. The antinomies show that in the actual world contradictory elements coexist without injury to one
another, but thought is too narrow to admit this, and in its dimension contradictory elements repel one
another.
14
The poet is Friedrich Schiller, and this famous passage comes from Wallensteins Tod, Act II, Scene 2.
Arne Koch provided helpful advice on translating the Schiller passage. Any infelicities of expression that
remain are my responsibility [TR].

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incessantly for that which does not really exist and which is not needed in the real.
The astounding thing here, which reminds us of the idea of the Cartesian deus
malignus, is that it is not through failure to be convinced of the futility of its deed
that it continues to search; it is innate, it is condemned to search for what does not
exist—because its subjective lawfulness demands it and it is not in its power to
change this. Indeed, it must in principle be capable of figuring this out, as these
considerations themselves prove. That does not mean that the curse of fruitless
struggle would be once and for all lifted from it. Instead, philosophical thinking
must also, where it sees such fruitlessness, do battle (by means of category research)
with ever new prejudices on a case by case basis, and struggle to achieve the critical
stance of renouncing resolution and harmony.
We do not have to decide here which of the two possibilities is the correct one, or
whether there is a third. Perhaps we can expect further information from a detailed
categorial analysis of individual antinomies. Another possibility is that both cases
exist side by side in different antinomies, so that we would have to distinguish two
types of antinomy. Indeed, ultimately both cases could also be combined in a
complex antithetical opposition, and could exist one layered behind the other, so to
speak. Certainly in advance of the categorial analysis we cannot decide for the one
or the other choice. It is evident at any rate that in both of the cases discussed it is
clear from the nature of the antinomy itself that it must be irresolvable.
The range of application of this insight is immeasurable. The prejudice against
various types of dualism is overcome by this means, since all dualism rests on an
antinomical relation of principles. In conclusion, just two examples are presented on
behalf of the significance of this principle.
Not every dualism is as innocent as the much-contested form and matter dualism,
good and evil, or even thing-in-itself and appearance. The last of the three is not a
genuine [313] antinomy, the second is at least debatable (all theodicies fundamen-
tally contest it), and only the first is unqualifiedly genuine. The theory of principles
does not lay stress on such historical debates. However, it does stress the relation
between ontological categories and values, or ontological and axiological principles.
A conflict is in fact embedded in this relation that, generally speaking, reigns
everywhere. Both kinds of principles make the claim to determine one and the same
world. However, both kinds of determination posit partially opposing elements. The
real world standing under ontological categories corresponds only partially to the
demands that proceed from values. These demands exist no less legitimately and are
not in the least impaired by their lack of fulfillment. The whole phenomenon of
ethical life (among other things) rests on this disparity. Its presupposition is the
incongruence of ‘is’ and ‘ought.’ The metaphysics of all ages has felt the
dissatisfaction of this open duality and has sought unifying solutions. Compensation
was sought along both axes: naturalism sought it in the primacy of ontological
principles, teleology in the primacy of axiological principles. Both fundamentally
destroy the problematic context of the ethical phenomenon. Naturalism destroys it
because it leaves no room for free purposive activity, but teleology destroys it
because it makes every event in the world purposive and claims in this manner that,
behind the back of man, absolutely everything, even the behavior of man, is
necessary (in light of some primary value). Both relations of the superiority of one

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over the other are misguided in principle and fail to appreciate the problem. Ethical
phenomena unavoidably demand precisely the disunified, independent coexistence
and conflict of two essentially different kinds of determination in one world.
The legitimacy of unresolved antinomical oppositions can be seen even more
vividly within the realm of values itself. Among ethical phenomena there are moral
conflicts. What is meant by this conflict is not the contradiction between moral and
immoral impulses (such as duty and inclination for Kant), but a conflict between
two moral impulses, between duty and duty, or expressed more precisely, between
value and value. This is a genuine ethical conflict—such as that between justice and
love—from which there is no exit without blame from one side or the other. If we
could explain this phenomenon away, then of course the antinomical opposition of
values would disappear. But we cannot. A deeper conflict subsists behind the ethical
conflict between the principles themselves, the pure, ideal conflict of values. It is a
special form of categorial antinomy and is in principle just as irresolvable as all
genuine antinomies. Without it, there would be nothing in life which man would
have to decide from case to case by means of his own responsibility.

Acknowledgments The translator would like to thank Roberto Poli, Stephanie Adair, and Frederic
Tremblay for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this translation.

References

Hartmann’s Works

Hartmann N (1914) Über die Erkennbarkeit des Apriorischen. Logos 5(3):290–329 [In Kleinere Schriften,
3 (1958). De Gruyter, Berlin, pp 186–220]
Hartmann N (1914) Logische und ontologische Wirklichkeit. Kant-Studien 20(1):1–28 [In Kleinere
Schriften, 3 (1958). De Gruyter, Berlin, pp 220–243]
Hartmann N (1921) Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis. De Gruyter, Berlin-Leipzig
Hartmann N (1958) Kleinere Schriften, vol 3. De Gruyter, Berlin

Other Works

Kant I (2007) Critique of pure reason, 2nd edn. Trans. Kemp-Smith. Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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philosophy and the doctrine of categories (1999), Trans. Christian Braun, Free Association Books]
Lotze H (1874) Logik. S. Hirzel, Leipzig [Logic (1884) Trans. Bosanquet. Clarendon Press, Oxford]
Schiller F (1986) Wallensteins Tod. Philipp Reclam, Stuttgart
Vaihinger H (1911) Die Philosophie des Als Ob. Reuther and Reichard, Berlin [The philosophy of ‘As If’:
a system of the theoretical, practical and religious fictions of mankind (1968), Trans. C. K. Ogden,
Barnes and Noble, New York (first published in England by Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1924)]

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